Posted 9:45 pm Friday, May 21, 2010
Carroll Hits All The Right Notes With Live Album
By STEWART SMITH
Entertainment Editor
Entertainment Editor
Adam Carroll's "Live at Flipnotics" album is one of the best records I've listened to in a long time.
My first exposure to Carroll's music was with the debut of his 2009 album, "Hard Times." I quite enjoyed it but I wouldn't say I was hooked by his work. Well, a month after I put "Live at Flipnotics" in my car's CD player, it had yet to be removed. You can now officially call me hooked.
Carroll, a Tyler native now fully entrenched in the Austin music scene, has delivered a live album that one could essentially equate to that of a "greatest hits" compilation as it spans his career beginning with his debut album, "South of Town" from 2000 to his 2009 album, "Hard Times." Flipnotics is a coffee house in Austin where Carroll -- typically a solo act -- performed with "Scrappy" Jud Newcomb, Beaver Nelson and special guest, Matt the Electrician. The result is an album that is lively, thoughtful, playful, insightful and even introspective.
It begins with "Home Again," a song that tells the story of a man drafted to fight in a war, desperate to be reunited with his family. It's a perfect start for the album as it showcases so much of Carroll's talent, specifically for that of storytelling, creating characters and providing a rich sense of place. That he does those things through a song clearly inspired by the travels of Odysseus from Homer's epic poem, "The Odyssey" only makes Carroll's gift for songwriting all the more obvious. But that's another one of Carroll's strengths, the ability to take unconventional material and weave a song around it, seen again in "Black Flag Blues" (a song about lost love filtered through high seas pirate imagery and mythology) and "Sno Cone Man" (a ballad of true love by way of shaved ice).
His aforementioned talent for filling his song with vivid characters is seen throughout the album, most notably in "The Girl with the Dirty Hair," "Sno-Cone Man" and "Oklahoma Gypsy Shuffler." You may not know the specific people that inspired Carroll, but if you're from Texas, chances are you at least know the archetype he's singing about.
East Texas natives will likely feel a special connection to several of Carroll's songs as he weaves locations and images into them, again adding to the very specific and often vivid sense of place found in his music. I found myself with a wide grin during he began singing about Crockett and Highway 21 as I was heading to that very town on that same highway and laughed as talked about his first road trip on Highway 69 from Tyler to Lufkin in "South of Town."
His strongest works on the album, though, are the ballads "Rice Birds," "Errol's Song" and "Highway Prayer." "Rice Birds" in particular is perhaps his most heartfelt song, one that plays like a lost a letter, filled with lush imagery, regret, lonliness and love.
Carroll is currently on tour promoting the release of the album.
