Audio CD review:
Adam Carroll - South of Town

Adam Carroll - South of Town

Band: Adam Carroll Title: South of Town Rating: Release Date: 01 May, 2001 Media: Audio CD Tracks: 1: Red Bandanna Blues 2: Cole 3: Bubble Gum 4: Fortune Teller Eyes 5: Smoky Mountain Taxi 6: South Of Town 7: Stranger's Advice 8: Home Again 9: Care River Blues 10: Silver Lakeside 11: Pokin' Round In The Ashes 12: Lacy

Customer Reviews Another Songwriter from Texas Grows on you! Even my 18 year son thinks Adam Carroll is great. Awesome, talented songwriter/musician. . Fun, fun, fun from a fresh folkie with five-star talent I thought "Long songs about unlikeable losers. When a friend sent me this CD as a gift a few weeks ago, I didn't have time to listen to it right away, but I did read the lyric sheet and I wasn't terribly impressed. . . this might turn out to be a grim downer. " My, but I was wrong. Hearing the songs, especially with Adam's fine guitar and harmonica work and the backup work by several other musicians, is a totally different experience than reading the lines. Adam has attitude, but with humor. He has technique that is consistently interesting. His presentation is a pleasant variant, not quite "singing" and not quite "talking blues". He has hints of Peter LaFarge, Tom Rush, the young Ramblin' Jack Elliott, and Todd Snider without deliberately modeling himself after any of them. This is a 46-minute introduction to a singer/songwriter/guitarist who has a bright future. All 12 of the songs are worth hearing, and it's rare that I find a release without two or three selections I want to skip after hearing only once. If you like folk/blues/rock and quirky individualism, give Adam a chance. The only reason I give the album four stars instead of five is that this one will be remembered for individual thoughts and lines and rhymes within each song, rather than for any one song being totally brilliant and unforgettable. Even better songwriting lies in his future, but listening to this fine release, one is positive that the masterpiece album is but a short time away. Not a Genius, But Dang Good In this case, he's more on the mark than in his other overblown assessments of singers he's produced (and plays with). Who cares what Lloyd Maines thinks? The guy produces every third-rate talent in Texas, so it only helps his already hopelessly inflated reputation if he himself labels someone a "genius" as a songwriter. Adam is the real thing, and Maines is lucky to have been asked to join him in the studio. One can only hope Adam is smart enough to go a different route production-wise with his next CD. There are a lot of first rate producers, and Lloyd Maines isn't one of them. . You can see a complete list of all Adam Carroll discography, or go back to the Adam Carroll tabs