![](https://relaxwithsound.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/BARRY-ADAMSON-–-Cut-to-Black.png)
The former Magazine and Bad Seeds bassist floats through an imagined past for one of his most enjoyable solo albums. It’s a blast.
For his 10th solo album, former Magazine and Bad Seeds bassist and all-around cool cat Barry Adamson looked to the past for inspiration. He was still in a reflective mood, having published Up Above The City, Down Beneath The Stars, the first volume of his memoirs, in 2021, but Cut to Black is not the soundtrack to the book, but instead an alternate history.
“I started to imagine my life without me in it,” Adamson says. “An author-as-observer, looking down upon this Murky World during that time and making a record of what I found there.” It’s a look at the early history of pop music and pop culture, starting with the death of Sam Cooke — murdered in a motel in 1964 in South Central L.A. — and explores forwards and backwards in time from there, with Adamson’s style and wit in sharp focus as usual.
As he’s done on previous albums he takes elements of classic rock n’ roll, soul, R&B, gospel and jazz and filters them through modern production techniques. Barry clearly had a lot of fun making this one and that comes through loud and clear on the listener’s side, and songs like “Amen White Jesus,” “One Last Midnight,” “Manhattan Satin,” “Was it a Dream” and “The Last Words of Sam Cooke” are a blast.
the brand new album ‘Cut To Black’ released 17 May 2024.