What Jason Adamo Knows

Location: Chapel Hill, NC
Hear the Music




Review:

Damn it’s good to hear a kid that can sing. In the endlessly expanding myspace universe of post-yourself-playing-your-older-brother’s-guitar/hear-me-sing-like-Mariah-Carey, it is good when a young artist makes you loosen the grimace on your face and say, “Hey, there really are some people out there with authentic talent.” Thank you for that, Jason Adamo. Clearly his strongest asset, Adamo’s voice is what strikes you first. When he sings, there is a tenacity and depth in his voice that forces you to pay attention; it pulls you into the room with him and makes you want to sit and listen. It is soulful yet authentic. There is no pretense or attempts to sound like anyone else. Yes his voice reminds you of Otis Redding; yes you hear the influence of Joe Cocker; yes you can picture him singing with Ben Harper; but, to be sure, there is no pretending happening here. You hear him sing and you know…ahhhh, that is Jason Adamo. You like it and you want to hear more of it.

Jason Adamo knows this. Jason Adamo gives us this. What Jason Adamo possibly does not know, is that great and threatening new artists cannot be one-trick-ponies. To truly spin heads, a new artist with a fantastic voice desperately needs the song. Yes, we are talking verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-yadda yadda yadda. I wanted so badly to find a recognizable hook in his songs so I could hum them to my wife and have her throw herself at me; so that I could lay awake at night and get pissed off because Jason Adamo’s songs just would not leave my head. That is what I wanted from him and did not quite get. His voice is amazing, but his songs just are not quite there…yet. They seem to float around but never really land. They are a bit long and wordy. They conjure up deep and luminous word pictures that can be hard to grasp.

Now, Jason, before you sit down to blast me on facebook and start talking about artists like Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Michael McDonald, and all things emo, just know that what I am talking about is earning the right to be heard. You have it in you…get it out. You have to make me want more of you. I want to hear a song that bowls me over with your voice but is finished before I even think about skipping to the next myspace page. I want a song where I know what the title is before I read it on your CD cover. Your voice is fantastic, now give me a reason to listen to it all day long. You can do this. “Jackie” is in the absolute right direction. It is simple, catchy, fun, hummable…I can hear it in a movie (minus the Garage Band intro). Give us more of this and we will pay attention to “Purple Sky”.

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