We'll be traveling up north to Minneapolis to play at the Clapperclaw Music and Arts Fesitval on Saturday the 8th of November.

In addition, we'll be at the Current for a radio spot on Friday the 7th as well as a show that night at the Turf Club in St. Paul with Jeremy Messersmith and Jeff Hanson.

Come on out!

-Peter

A review from Cincinnatil music critic Mike Breen in CityBeat:

   

Three years ago, Cincinnati-based singer/songwriter/home recordist Peter Adams release The Spiral Eyes, a gorgeous collection of orchestral Indie Pop that gradually went on to grab international acclaim. Adams was featured prominently in Magnet magazine and he also scored a mention in Spin magazine more recently.   

For Adams' much-anticipated follow-up, I Woke With Planets In My Face, the songwriter keeps the home-recorded vibe alive and creates an even more sonic, textured bedroom masterpiece (though the production is anything but lo-fi, robust as anything recorded in an expensive studio). The new "CD" has been made available at peteradamsmusic.com as a "name-your-price" download (a la Radiohead's In Rainbows), though hard copy versions of the disc will be available this Saturday at Adams' show at Baba Budan's in Clifton. (Hard copies can also be ordered through the Web site; in a few months, a deluxe "Lunaphonic Omnibox" version, with extra goodies, will be made available).   

However one chooses to buy Planets, the music contained within is thrilling, insanely catchy and remarkably diverse. The most noticeable change from Adams' last album is his effortless integration of World music sounds, something he incorporates without detracting from the strong songwriting core. "Annabel Lee" has a Gypsy feel (accordion and all), capturing what might happen if The Shins collaborated with Gogol Bordello, while the chimes and violin of "Ghost in the Fen" have an almost oriental flavor.   

Middle Eastern and Eastern European influences creep in and out throughout the album, but this is no Graceland-esque excursion. Adams bread-and-butter is a mix of lushly orchestrated strings with lavish, engrossing melodies. Practically every track on the album is a thrill ride, as Adams breaks the "Pop" mold to allow the songs to breathe and wander. Calling Adams' music orchestral isn't just a reference to the layered strings — he writes in a very symphonic way, making his tunes more accurately described as "compositions" or "scores" than just songs.   

The album holds a hypnotic sway when taken as a whole, but even individual tracks mesmerize and pull the listener in. The glacial "Antarctica" is a spellbinding epic, Sigur Ros-esque in scope and grandeur, with a swelling chorus that will have your back-of-neck hairs standing at attention and saluting. Likewise, "The Seventh Seal" is a grand ballad that builds like a cresting wave that never crashes ashore, the high-ceilinged melodies hovering atop like gently rolling clouds.   

I Woke With Planets In My Face is a sumptuous, luxuriant album, full of spine-tingly twists at every turn. It's the kind of album you could listen to for a year and still discover new things. If his humble debut attracted ears like flies, then Planets is about to be swarmed with even more acclaim. When I reviewed The Spiral Eyes three years ago, I gave it an unprecedented "grade" of "A+." Looks like we'll have to come up with a new grading system just to accommodate this enthralling tour de force.

It has been a little over three years since I released "The Spiral Eyes." Today, I'm happy to say the wait for new music is over, because "I Woke With Planets In My Face" can now be downloaded exclusively from my site for whatever price you think it's worth.

There's a slight delay with the CD shipment, so CD orders cannot be taken quite yet, but to make it up to you I'm posting the digital download a day earlier than previously announced.

I want to say thanks to all my fans who have been looking forward to this album for so long. It was a draining, exhaustive, exciting and inspiring process to create the songs on it, and I hope you find it worth the wait.

The next album has already begun.

-Peter

The link to the show we did at WOXY can be found here: http://woxy.lala.com/music/loungeacts/index.php?id=267

Announcing the release of "I Woke With Planets In My Face," the second full-length album by acclaimed songwriter Peter Adams, on May 13, 2008.

Over two years in the making and featuring twelve new songs, "I Woke With Planets In My Face" is the followup to 2005's underground hit "The Spiral Eyes." Written, recorded, and produced entirely by himself, Peter continues to build on the imaginary landscapes that made his first album so popular despite a virtual absence of marketing and no record label. 

The exciting and rapidly changing music climate of digital distribution has left traditional companies scrambling, but what is a problem for big business is a boon to independent artists. In light of this, and as an extension of the DIY spirit that is inherent in a self-produced album, we are excited to announce three different options for obtaining the album.

1) Digital Download. "I Woke With Planets In My Face" can be downloaded as a package of mp3s, including album art, for whatever price you want. This is not a limited-time-only offer or just an experiment to create buzz, but a permanent form the album will take. "The Spiral Eyes" will also become available as a name-your-price download. Get the music at www.peteradamsmusic.com beginning May 13, 2008.

2) Traditional CD. "I Woke With Planets In My Face" will be available as a traditional jewel-case CD for only $8.99. The disc can be ordered on CDbaby, peteradamsmusic.com, or purchased at a live show beginning May 13, 2008.  

3) The Lunaphonic Omnibox. This package will include the jewel-case CD version "I Woke With Planets In My Face," a stamped limited-edition copy on vinyl with bonus artwork, a booklet with extensive information about each song and the recording process, original lyrics sheets and music, an autographed poster, and an assortment of stickers, buttons, and patches. Production of the Lunaphonic Omnibox will be specially priced and limited to 500, and will be available for purchase three months after the album's launch. 

Press release page: http://www.peteradamsmusic.com/pressrelease.html

From the March issue of Spin:

"With all the drama of an ethereal movie soundtrack, Adams’ songs brilliantly merge his classical training (he started playing violin at age three) and the inevitable teen-punk backlash. On his latest, I Woke With Planets In My Face, out this spring, the hyperliterate Adams composes folksy pop tunes solo and translates them into full-band symphonies."

You can read the whole issue online here: http://digital.spin.com/spin/200803/?u1=texterity
I’m near the end along with Wussy, Hi-Tek, Heartless Bastards, and Bad Veins in a profile of Cincinnati music.

I just finished burning a handful of review copies of the album to send out to some media outlets, which means the music is all finished and now it’s just a matter of getting the printing underway. Expect a press release on these pages in the next few days!

From the Jan/Feb Magnet, on stands now:

Nothing puts a finer point on a musician's relative youth than having to fit an interview around his classroom schedule. So it goes with 24-year-old DIY singer/songwriter Peter Adams, who's busy with a few composition and orchestration courses at the University of Cincinnati's College-Conservatory of Music when he's not endeavoring to get his nascent rock-music career off the ground.

"I'm not really making enough money from music to drop everything else," says Adams. "We've had a great response so far, but it can be a little hard to find an audience beyond those we've played for."

Expectation-setting opening gambits aside, 2006 has nevertheless been a upbeat year for Adams. His debut LP, terrifically accomplished home recording The Spiral Eyes (Subcircle), has recieved gradual, warm embrace from indie fans whose ears are accustomed to the pseudo-psychedelic fare of Neutral Milk Hotel and the moody narratives of Radiohead and Jeff Buckley. (Adams' voice is a dead ringer for Buckley's Grace era work, while his classical violin lends the songs a sweeping, dramatic arc.) Encouraged by the support of early listeners, Adams formed a band -- the four piece Nocturnal Collective -- that subsequently caught the attention of Nashville engineer Chris Grainger (Wilco, Viva Voce), who plans to record the group. Myspace and an active Web-site community have helped fuel interest in Adam's music beyond his native Cincinnati, reacing global outposts such as Sweden and Germany. According to Adams, half a dozen new home-recorded tracks await band interpretation.

"It's been slowly getting better and better," Adams says of working with a backing band. "we haven't even been playing a year together yet, so we're still pretty green. But we're finding our groove now."

Still, the prosaic and seldom glamorous lot of the touring musician has held it's fair share of surprises for Adams. "We had that thing that happens to every band recently when our van broke down," he says.
"We were playing a show in Nashville, and the next morning in rush-hour traffic the van stops accellerating and comes to a stop. We rented a new van, drove back to Cincinnati with our stuff, headed back to Nashville a week later to find thw whole transmission shot." He laughs. "Welcome to rock 'n' roll."

From the latest issue of Magnet, on stands now:

"Most of us weren't old enough to buy records back when Sgt. Pepper was first unleashed on an unsuspecting public, nor were we conscious of Hendrix when his backward-masked, brain-bending Are You Experienced? first visited itself upon the rock-starved masses. But - retrospecitvely, of course - we can dream up plenty of scenarios in which some kid hears this magic-mushroom music for the first time and, starry-eyed, decides right then and there to start a band and dedicate a life to music, no questions asked.

Not to saddle him with the weight of outsized expectations - Cincinnati's Peter Adams is at too tender an age (merely 22 when his DIY debut, The Spiral Eyes, was recorded in his home studio in 2004) to be that kid either - but the same feelings of euphoria are instantly recognizable upon listening to his handiwork, which is no mean feat considering the sticks-and-stones nature of the album's origins.

"I tried very hard to make the album sound . . . not professional or polished, but good enough so that people's first reactions wouldn't be, 'Oh, it's a home recording,'" says Adams. "I'm influenced by stuff like Neutral Milk Hotel: fantasy, dream-like, psychadelic things. I just wanted to make a record good enough so that people wouldn't ignore it."

Indeed, The Spiral Eyes (Subcircle) immediately commands attention as one of the finest debuts you'll hear this year. Listening to Adams' music for the first time is like viewing a classic-rock mosaic through kaleidoscope eyes. The album's dozen tracks include moments of Radiohead's exquisitely crafted chamber angst, Jeff Magnum's chemically-altered, wide-eyed wonder, Jeff Buckley's angelic introspection and the Flaming Lips' finest flights of orchestral fancy.

At least insofar as his own life is concerned, Adams comes by his relationship with music honestly enough. His father is a professor at the University of Cincinnati's College-Conservatory of Music and encouraged Adams' interest in music early on, enrolling him in violin lessons at age three.

"I was really lucky to have that kind of upbringing," says Adams, connecting his training to the luminous string parts that bob in and out of his arrangements. "I didn't necessarily enjoy it at the time; I had all the music theory, the practice, the playing in orchestras on the weekend and all that. But it made writing pop songs - at least, coming from the perspective of a classical tradition - very easy."

As a student at Oberlin College, Adams taught himself guitar by playing along to old-school punk rock records. "Circle Jerks, Minor Threat, X-Ray Spex, Bad Brains." he says. "In fact I owned the complete Dead Kennedys discography before I bought my first Beatles album. "

Herein lies the chram of what Adams sarcastically calls his "violin-soaked punk-rock folk": His music is at once classicaly influenced and yet tethered to nothing but his own fevered imagination, bringing the bedsit-producer mindest out of the basement and into the bright light of day."

-Corey duBrowa

It would be hard to take a list of most rocking songs seriously without an entry from the Ramones. There was some campaigning made for Blitzkrieg Bop, which is undoubtedly rocking and probably their most popular song. Other possibilities included Wart Hog,  Mama's Boy, and, simply for the outstanding title, Somebody Put Something In My Drink.

However, Bonzo Goes to Bitburg has something these other songs lack. While most Ramones tracks are about two minutes and either feature a chugging I-IV-V or a retro surf feel, Bonzo Goes to Bitburg is truly epic, clocking in at 3:53 and featuring multiple backing vocals and a glockenspiel.

The subject of the song is also a departure for the Ramones, who usually sing about sniffing glue and beating on brats. It was written in protest to a 1985 visit made by President Reagan to a cemetary in Bitburg where Nazi war criminals were buried. Interestingly enough the song was released as My Brain is Hanging Upside Down in the US because Johnny Ramone, a conservative Republican, didn't want the overt reference to Reagan in the title.

We begin right off with the glockenspiel/bell/chime and some whispy atmospheric noises, with the chugging guitar entering at 0:06. One drum fill later and the song is moving along steadily at 0:12. It's a simple 3-chord progression (what Ramones song isn't?) of F - C - G sus4. Joey Ramone starts singing at 0:23 with more reverb than we're used to on a Ramones production, which adds to the epic rocking feel of the song.

The first backing vocals come at 0:33 where they emphasize the line "Call, call the law." We then shift to the relative minor (A) for the chorus at 0:44 where Joey's descending line matches the chords falling A to G to F. We also get some lovely sloppy punk rock harmonizing on the chorus which to me is a hallmark of a most rocking song.

We then get a great singalong and pump your fist moment after the chorus at 1:06 with the "Ah-na-na-na!" backing vocals in the side channels and Joey singing in the center ("My brain is hanging upside down"). There's a nice machine-gun snare roll at about 1:34 to lead us back to the next verse.

There's an instrumental break at 2:41 that modulates the key up a whole step to D major and a sweet little glockenspiel solo at 2:51, something you don't hear nearly enough in rock music. We then get another great singalong moment at the start of the third verse at 3:02 with the harmonized line "There's one thing that makes me sick / when someone tries to hide behind politics." By modulating to D major and adding backing vocals where there were none before, the Ramones have engineered a fullproof plan to up the rockin' factor by a factor of at least 6.    

The song ends on a pop fade, something I usually don't like. It works OK here, but I would rather have had something a little more definite to end such a rocking song. At least we had a glockenspiel solo though.   

Bonzo Goes to Bitburg on iTunes.