Adam Selzer
All The Walls Are Bare
Film Guerrero
Norfolk & Western, the band behind last year’s rustic beauty Winter Farewell, is still a fully operational outfit, but main man Adam Selzer has decided to lose that moniker for his first solo album, thereby underlining the different approach he is taking this time around. Relying more expressively on the strength of his songwriting, there isn’t much of Norfolk & Western’s ambience-heavy production here. In fact, although Selzer runs his own Type Foundry studios, he opted out of using it, instead recording this on 8 tracks at home over a two-week period, playing all instruments himself. The result is a more conventional take on the sadcore-flavored alt-country that defines Selzer’s earlier work, yet it’s as arresting and intimate as ever.
All The Walls Are Bare is stripped to the bones, but never at the expense of detail or instrumental nuances. It is careful and dampened but hauntingly real as well. From the endearing, pained version of the Beatles’ “This Boy” to the drained, lovely tiredness of “All You Can Prepare” and closing with the wonderful “Privacy’s Disguise,” Selzer has made an honest and clever album, broadening the parameters of his music, while moving closer to the sound of the Old West that inspired him in the first place.
Film Guerrero Records: http://www.filmguerrero.com/
