PD Adams (aka Paul Adams) has a new album This Curious Wonder is newly released and wholly beautiful.
Album opener “Sometimes I Feel” sets the tone for the rest of the album in the first couple of seconds. Hushed and deeply solemn, Adams keeps the instruments gently calling and responding, with profound lyrics pointing directly in to the heart of the bittersweet human experience. “What I want I can’t have… I feel like I’m grasping out madly, to what I once had and this much freedom tends to lead one to despair.”
“You Are Not That” has three ending points. Listen and hear for yourself. Like other songs on the album, it opens with hushed vocals and strings that sound like the first peek of a sunrise. It pays homage to reflection and the foundation of what it means to be human. “You can not be defined by just one single point in time.” “You’re simply human, sometimes gone wrong.”
“Man at 4th and Vine” shines light on the crossover feel of a homeless soul who may be a prophet. “Some thought he was a mystic, or a prophet of good deeds, and some thought he was the devil, but they’re just scared of mystery. And rumor said it’d be luck, if anyone could find a broken mirror reflecting the man at 4th and Vine.”
“Old Faded Photo” references a fall from grace, and the stirring lines: “In this house, of broken boards and wood, that used to stand so tall, covered by the sun and a partly shingled roof, and a room where I’d heard mama call, there’s an old faded photo, hanging on the wall. Memories of a childhood, I once knew before the fall.” Mixed within the dissonant strings on this song are the teardrops of sorrow and betrayal, and a longing for innocence. The crescendo is marvelous.
“Songbird” has the best kind of thoughtful pedal steel and touches on the incongruence and overlap between pleasure and pain, love and loss. It ends with “Hoping, wandering, suffering, loving.” PD Adams has the vocals of a wise man and the lyrics fall right in step.
“The Picnic” incorporates the sound of waves against the shore with quiet spoken word.
Channeling a stillness that honors true teachers like the recently passed Thich Nhat Hanh, this is a deeply lovable album. It’ll help you step back into a daydream repose or remember intuitively the core of human experience. Find the album here: https://pauladams.bandcamp.com/album/this-curious-wonder
And find more information here: http://www.pauladams.org
Musicians on the album are PD Adams (Paul Adams) on guitar, harmonica, mandolin, sitar, harmonica, oud, dobro and vocals; David Hoffman (Ray Charles) on horns; Elizabeth Geyer on flugel horns, piano and vocals; Andy Hatfield on mandolin; and Bradley Harper on Sleete guitar.