Steve Adey...
...was born and raised in Birmingham, England - moved to New York City at age 20, and is now based in Scotland's capital city, Edinburgh....released his debut album 'All Things Real' in 2006 - recorded in a rented cottage in the Scottish Borders, and Longformacus Parish Church, Scotland. Musicians (Doug MacDonald, Naomi Van Noordennen, Dave Biddulph, Simon McGlynn, Helena MacGilp and Maggie Cripps) contributed. The recording was mastered by Calum Malcolm.ALL THINGS REAL - REVIEWS:Sunday Times - CD of the week: "The secret lies in the gap between Adey's main influences: on the one hand, the mournful, home-made alt-country of Oldham and Smog; on the other, the pristine atmospheres of the Blue Nile and Talk Talk. Its into this gap that Adey pours his music, acknowledging both sets of influences, but sounding like neither. If you like the people Adey likes, you'll welcome his arrival."Sunday Times - Top 40 songs of 2006 - Shelter from the Storm: "You’d have to be a fool to cover one of Dylan’s best-loved songs. Either that, or a singer with the presence — and presence of mind — to slow it right down, exposing the beauty of every syllable."Scotland on Sunday: "A powerful reading of Dylan's 'Shelter From the Storm', not to mention his own composition titled 'Mary Margaret O'Hara', should give you an idea of where Adey is coming from. But neither those pointers nor the involvement of Blue Nile and Prefab Sprout producer Calum Malcolm are more significant than his talent."Uncut: "By turns chilly and intimate, he's clearly in thrall to the folk fatalism of Will "Bonnie Prince Billy" Oldham (as is underscored by a cover of "I See A Darkness") along with Dylan (a slow-slow "Shelter From The Storm") and the knotty American pre-war minstrels that inspired him. Engineer on records by the likes of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Adey's layered approach adds unexpected shading to these often bleak songs. A promising start."Jyllands Posten: "Beautiful, melodic, ambitious and home made debut from Steve Adey. He makes Dylan's Shelter From The Storm sound like a deep wound, but he also shows his own worth by inventing his own songs."Americana UK: "An astonishing debut. Adeys songs occupy a mournful, emotional and intimate soundscape. Songs such as The Lost Boat Song recall Smog, and the ghost of Jeff Buckley. The real highlight however is another seemingly crazy choice of cover, Shelter From the Storm. It is almost unrecognisable, a slow building piano and vocal led version which actually adds something to the song, imbuing it with a sense of gravity and longing which Dylan doesn't quite allow on Blood On The Tracks. With his choice of covers, Adey cant lack ambition and self belief, and the promising nature of the original material can only raise expectations for what may be to follow."Alt-country.nl: "Adey knows his way around classics, but at the same time, his own songs offer something very much his own. Something beautiful, something serene, something that you cant stop listening too. Something real, All Things Real."Gigwise: "There is nothing so joyously frivolous as a toy instrument here, just pure heartfelt emotion throughout. Dreamlike moments."MusicOMH.com: on 'Shelter from the storm', "The song is deconstructed completely and carried on the sparse sound of Adey's piano. The track builds slowly with new instrumental shades added at the end of each verse. It's an exercise in self-discipline that is perfectly executed. There is real passion in the delivery and a sense of foreboding running throughout. Dylan songs are hard to get a handle on but this is a clever reinterpretation of a classic."Stylus: "By the end of his eight-minute cover of Dylan's Shelter from the Storm, the whole band is playing, but it feels just as desolate as the opening seconds; never has Dylan's creature void of form sounded so wracked, so stricken. Adey takes advantage of the space to use his voice more powerfully than on the rest of All Things Real. He never quite bellows, but he possesses force. His voice is one of the best things about the album: clear and direct but with a slight rasp and constant undercurrent of woe that fits the gloomy sound to a T."Is This Music? "Opening your debut album - well, after a minute of solo piano - with a version of Will Oldham's I See A Darkness, might be seen as brave... or foolish. Well, despite Johnny Cash already covering the tune, its painful fragility is well-conveyed and retained by Adey. But what of his own work? The Lost Boat Song answers this immediately - in the same vein as the preceding cover, this is possibly on a par with Oldham's songwriting Find The Way is a late night Blue Nile-style croon, and is musically preferable to another cover, of Dylan's Shelter From The Storm. Whether this is a tribute to one of his heroes or a lack of confidence in his own songwriting, isn't clear, but The Last Remark - still dark but more up-tempo - shows that Adey should have no fears on that score."Glasgow Sunday Herald: "Adey's reading of Shelter From The Storm (one of the highlights of Blood On The Tracks) turns Bob Dylan's fable into a languorous piano ballad which owes as much to Leonard Cohen and John Cale as it does to Saint Bob. That Adey's own songs hold up in this context at all, let alone very well, should have him wiping his brow in relief. On tracks like The Lost Boat Song and Evening Of The Day, Adey channels the spirit of Smog, minus Bill Callahan's caustic take on dysfunctional relationships; elsewhere, there are hints of the late Jeff Buckley's mournful tenderness."CD Times: "Playing the album for the first time didn't disappoint. The influence of those two great bands is apparent from the start, a sparse and airy production that allows the music to breathe and where the silences and background noises of the studio are there to augment the music and add to its stature. Opening with a sparse piano piece with no vocals, Death To All Things Real, the sound of the creaking piano stool adds an eerie presence to the song whilst Find The Way wouldn't have sounded out of place on The Blue Nile's Peace At Last a slow, beautifully arranged song with sparse drums and piano with Adey's voice sounding uncannily like Paul Buchanan. It's the original material here that's the real revelation. There's a hint of alt-country and Americana to proceedings, but it's the more folk-tinged aspects of it rather than the full blown country-rock elements. The songs are so delicate and sparse with rarely anything more than guitar, drums and piano as accompaniment that they don't detract from Adey's skills as a songwriter. The songs may all deal with love, but their spun with a certain beauty. Evening Of The Day a dark ballad of protection and missing love, asking "Lord be with my love tonight" whilst their lover is away and may not return. This is an accomplished debut record from an impressive talent and one that will hopefully stick around and challenge the over-produced and over-fawned work of the mainstream singer, songwriters."No Ripcord: "A a seriously impressive debut album that’s sadly probably too morose, too serene to make any commercial headway. But if you pine for the day when singers had gravity and depth to their voice, when songs were proper songs, maybe for the days of Nick Drake, or at least Nick Cave when he tones down the noise, then Adey could just be your man."Pop Junkie: "The innate Scottishness of Alasdair Roberts or The Delgados and coupling it will the ethereal spooksville of Will Oldham or Lambchop. Laden with strings, warm piano and gently strummed acoustic, Adey creates a desolate but tender sound which leaves the listener breathless."Contact: "A fantastic, mature piece of work - if Cat Power had a voice like Micah P Hinson, she'd be making music like this. Wonderfully edgy, the ten songs include two covers: one, of Bob Dylan's Shelter From The Storm, will be one of the best things you hear this year (guaranteed)."
Signal to Noise: "As befits a guy whose background is recording engineering, Steve Adey sculpts his singer-songwriter debut with surgeon’s precision: Strings, harmonium and choirgirl-like backing vocals become perfectly blended hues over his dark-folk canvasses. The glacial pacing doesn’t always make for an easy listen, but gives Adey plenty of space for his codeine-thick croon to send forth wistful mantras: “Let’s go for a ride, we can drive through the night/and we will find the neon lights will shine for us there,†he sings in “Find the Way†to an unreachable love. Adey’s covers of Bob Dylan’s “Shelter from the Storm†and Will Oldham’s “I See a Darkness†don’t get tripped up in folk-to-indie rock chasm, just find the dark corners they share in common. The best moments come when the backing musicians step out of the dusky background: Douglas Macdonald’s spindly reverb pushes “The Last Remark†from haunting folk into straight-up epic territory."Buy All Things Real from...
