There are some artists who continually push and pull themselves into new artistic terrain with each release. And there are some artists who stay within their creative comfort zone and try to make it the best it can be with every effort. Peter Bradley Adams belongs in the latter group and has, for years, been one of the most consistently eloquent and pleasing singer/songwriters on the scene. Indeed, his brand of musical melancholy is so specific and evocative that, sometimes, listening through his catalog is the only way to survive a moment or a day.
Every Adams albums is like a worn-in — but hardly worn-out — pair of jeans. There’s a comfortable respite, an easy familiarity in his songs and his sound. Quite often, there’s also a restless longing to be examined and, potentially, reconciled within the space of four gloriously short minutes, if not the sum of each album’s songs. For Adams is a seeker and an explorer, both internally and externally. He looks at life — his own and others’ — through a lens of impermanence and wonder.
On The Mighty Storm, tracks like “Feather in Her Crown” and “A Way to You Again” pick up where “Under My Skin” and “I Cannot Settle Down” left off. Adams seems persistently and equally tormented by the friction between his sentimentality and his wanderlust. It’s a classic conundrum, and a lasting leitmotif that serves Adams, the songwriter, very well. Though the title might suggest a coming whirlwind of emotional turbulence, The Mighty Storm is far more pernicious and stealthy in its approach, but it’s no less potent.
