Adam Faucett New Variations of the Reaper
Arkansas musician songwriter Adam Faucett has a new album, New Variations of the Reaper. This album pays homage to Arkansas throughout, with a darkness and a slow electric guitar energy in songs that were written during Adam’s arduous road to recovery from throat surgery. The resulting album is a battle of fears, interspersed with images of reapers, sometimes the grim reaper, feeling your way in the dark, surrendering to the arms of the one you love, and iconic Arkansas landmarks.
“Anything For Sleep” starts out gentle and then the electric guitar and Adam’s vocals add oomph and a bit of distortion, and that groggy feel of sleep deprivation is conveyed clearly, and then Beatles-esque harmonies and a viola make an appearance. Take together this is a unique style – heavy, classic, dreamlike and doused over with a dose of discomfort.
“Fire Lane” is blurrier and heavier in a tale of what happens when the bar closes and the chair are all upside down: “it’s 4am when you strangers become my kin and we just laugh about the good ol days.” Next is the track the album was named for, “The Reaper.” He sings: “I can’t find my way around, I go by feel, I go by sound. I’m well past dreams, I’m well past reason. I know this house just by the ceiling. Am I dead? Or just following through the lives I’ve lived and the ones I have become.”
Adam is legally blind, so songs like this one tap into the universally shadowy experiences of nighttime displacement, only for him it’s a more common experience, and not being able to see holds so much metaphorical potential that Adam can mine freely.
