Peter Adams - I Woke With Planets in My Face

Sundays are such odd days. It's like we project what we expect to find on Monday onto this day. If we view the start of a new week with fresh enthusiasm, our Sundays take on a bright optimism. If we see our Monday morning as a dark vortex set to suck the remainder of our week into, Sundays are a dark, purgatorial vacuum.
If it's our own consciousnesses that project our reality, then Sundays could be the most vital time of the week. I mean, if we go into the week with bold idealism, waving our flags of belief, we can charge into it with a splintering energy and come out the other side with a smile still on our faces.
Peter Adams' newest LP, I Woke With Planets in My Face, is the type of album for this situation. It's an uplifting, yet unassunming album. Adams seems to know that the venom of cynicism has worked itself deep into our cultural veins and extracts it gently with his bright music. Inspired, yet not derivative of Sufjan Stevens, Adams' music has the meticulous insturmentation that would fit right in with the ghosts of mid-90's Elephant Six and SpinArt labels.
Take for example, 'I Was Looking at the Ceiling, and then I Saw the Sky'. Granted, the title sounds like something off of the next uber-pretentious Radiohead LP, but if you close your eyes and listen, it's as if the building rhythm and developing string-led structure inflate slowly underneath you. It leads directly into 'Antarctica,' which spins the dynamics into a melodica-led bliss of pastoral imagery and melody. As the music continues to forumlate, it keeps returning your attention to Adams' voice, lyrics, and acoustic guitar. I Woke With Planets... is essentially a singer/songwriter album. Adams's songs are his gems and depsite the heavy string arrangements and production, he stays determined to have them noticed. The ultimate brilliance of the album is within that. I'm still digging at this album to uncover it's layers and meanings. It's an intriguing and complex work. Each listen proves to be familiar, yet new.
'Annabelle Lee' is indeed an adaptation of E.A. Poe's famous poem and uses (seriously) kazoos to enliven America's most widely read poet's macabre work with a sense of ironic cheer. It's not wholly effective, but Adams isn't looking to teach an English lesson, he's looking to entertain with his songs and 'Annabelle Lee''s awkwardness is what makes it work at all. It's presence is indicitive of the album. It's not perfect, but it's imperfections are what gives it its charm.
This is the type of album recorded under the same mindset as Pet Sounds or Odyssey and Oracle; a psychedelia-steeped, slow-burner that doles out its rewards carefully but with undiminishing enjoyment.