Adam Nutter impresses on his debut solo album.
As grim as it was there were a few positives to come out of the pandemic, depending on your point of view.
Where one sits on the rise of digital engagement is down to the individual, but there’s no denying the increased levels of convenience and content (shudder).
More specifically, for those in the know the reformation of The Music and the subsequent rebirth of guitarist and songwriter Adam Nutter is quite the story.
The four-piece from Leeds were perennial outsiders, never fitting in with either the garage rock revival or the subsequent influx of British bands who followed in its wake.
Their first album fostered a cult following which continues to this day – the iconic, circular artwork which adorned t-shirts still recognised as a badge of distinction like a mason’s pin.
For assorted reasons, sadly the four young men were unable to sustain their momentum and Adam Nutter, scarred by his experiences, retreated from the world.
The Twitter Listening Parties brought Nutter out of hibernation and saw him re-engage with his artistic muse firstly through two reformation gigs last summer, and it now culminates in Badlands On Fire, his debut solo album.
As his band were, the album finds Nutter remaining true to his art and doing nothing so demeaning as to attempt to recreate The Music.
Instead, it sees him venture into astral terrain through his musicianship alone. There are no lyrics, but the tones of the songs ably convey their intent.
Dreamtwister opens the album with a pensive, sun-rising beauty before heavenly glistening takes the listener into the embodiment of aural joy.
Fittingly with a feeling of rebirth and renewal, it was the first new piece of music Nutter composed in over a decade, and the album follows his creative process intricately with a listing that reflects the order in which the songs were composed.
Like all the pieces, Timefall is built around his intricate guitar playing with subtle strings and a tone of moving forward and resolution, bristling with dreamscapes in the vein of The Verve’s Nick McCabe.
The title-track follows as one lookback at the wilderness years, like a less bombastic Mogwai, before casting them aside. Remarkably for an entirely instrumental album, it’s one of only two songs that could benefit from lyrics, although that would detract from Adam Nutter’s consistently impressive playing.
Endless Summer grooves with the core of a pop song and is perhaps the most closely aligned with corners of The Music’s catalogue (for those looking) such as Open Your Mind while, paradoxically, Skyfires cleanses like an unrestrained plunge into freezing water.
The Last Dance Of The Light is so uplifting it could cause vertigo, while Into The Dust’s main riff, written during Adam Nutter’s touring days in the mid-2000s, has a spectral, ethereal feel that in a parallel universe would have been an interesting route for the band.
Lastly, Salvation closes the album fittingly with a sense of acceptance, resolution and, once again, renewal, asserting the work as mood music in its truest sense.
The scale of Badlands On Fire is vast and the use of the descriptive ‘epic’ is over-used but is entirely appropriate in this case.
Unashamed to tap into emotion, this is no unassuming, understated comeback and should, by rights, see Adam Nutter lauded as a unique artist.