Album Review: Adam & Dave’s Bloodline – Boycott Classics (4/5)

Adam & Dave’s Bloodline
Boycott Classics
Release Date: May 12, 2009
Label: Boycott Classics

F10 Rating:

There’s something to be said about any album that refuses a genre.  Albums that are shape-shifting masses are always interesting listens, even if some of the shapes don’t necessarily work out. Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy is an eternally fascinating album for its sonic experiments. So what if “The Crunge” kind of falls flat on its funky face or that “D’Yer Mak’er” is more a fun caricature of reggae than an actual example of it.  These songs are interesting – they present new personality to the band we didn’t know about before.

Adam & Dave’s Bloodline, a band who has cruised the local Philly scene in recent years while occasionally opening for the likes of Jay Reatard and the Meat Puppets, is such a band for whom there is no specific personality.  They are shape-shifters – they talk about music the way you and I do, pouncing on a topic regarding one band before they can remember to finish their point about another.  In a way, they are you and I.  They aren’t exactly famous, and they have in some ways found a living turning those conversations into songs.  Most of the songs are very good, just as a passionate conversation about your favorite band is satisfying chitchat.

Boycott Classics is the latest album by Adam & Dave’s Bloodline, a band that is led by Adam Garbinski and Dave Petersen but also features Brian Newel (drums), Kirk Henderson (bass, keyboard) and Lois Keenan (vocals and percussion).  The band has never shied away from genre-bashing techniques in the past – one of their older songs called “The Traveler”, Petersen once said, was essentially fused together from the Crystals’ “Then He Kissed Me” and Bob Dylan and the Band’s “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” – but the variety found on Boycott Classics enters a new realm for the band.

Produced by repeat collaborator Paul Smith after the band got some treatment on an EP by Bill Moriarty (Dr. Dog, Man Man), Classics opens with the thunderous crash of “Curating Disasters” before setting itself with the confidently smooth “It’s a Crime”, a standout track backed by a kickass horn ensemble that falls somewhere between the Psychedelic Furs and the Afghan Whigs.

There’s a lot to love on Classics, mostly in the varying textures. There’s the cheerful summer bike ride of “Cautious Again”, the Springsteenien arena rock grandeur of “In the Zoo” and the thuggish punk riffs that flex “Bird Shit Boy”.  In short, it’s the most complete record the band has recorded to date. Since most of you f10 readers outside of the Philly area probably haven’t heard of them, this may as well be the perfect record to start with.  It doesn’t sum up the band, but then, that’s part of their charm.  By design, there probably can never be a definitive Adam & Dave album.  If the records are all like this, though, that’s no reason to complain.