once released Murder Ballads, an album that serves as the premise for a musical genre that effectively describes the work of Portland, Oregon's
.
Sultry, passionate and intense through and through, the compositions provide the perfect drive and spark that Adrian's narrative story-telling requires. Adrian's ever-present piano forms the basis for the arrangements which rock with a cabaret post-punk mood à la
Bauhaus and
Love And Rockets. The songs as stories are presented in a dark, brooding film noir style, as if told in a smoky joint in a backwater southern town populated by characters at the edge of society; they're broken and yet more whole than its shining citizens. These men and women are not presented as sinners but as rounded human beings condemned to life as it is without the need for redemption. They are 'real' if you like, observed by
Adrian H as a modern day and more mature Bukowski who has chucked the excess and honed his stories to a razor-sharp point. It's all quite literate, dark and brooding, yet fused with speakeasy black humor.
Each song is a world all its own, sometimes introspective, sometimes vaudeville, sometimes driving post-punk, often very catchy and always very emotional.
Adrian's murder'n crime tales would work as a
Tim Burton soundtrack: pitch-black moments, blackhearted and gloomy, yet sizzling and captivating. Adrian's virulent and venemous vocals deliver grim stories with musical echoes of
Nick Cave and
Tom Waits.
