Adom: Idiot Savant

“This band kisses crowds like black widows," according to the Miami Herald. This band, like many, many bands before them, and many, many more to come, have been locked into a gruelling, mammoth-sized tour spanning several months. This band, like all the other performers who travel the same path, have acquired that glazed over "I’ve-seen-napalm" stare that comes hand in hand with the toilet tour phenomenon.

This band is Adom. And just like all those other bands whose dreams are waiting on the other side of the horizon, this band are still struggling for the attention that will shed their camouflaged existence. Despite the fact they have probably seen more of these precious isles than you and I have put together. But if that black widow statement is anything to go by, we’ve all got a lot to learn, and Adom have a lot to prove.

'Idiot Savant' is Adom's debut album. It is also a term that refers to certain mentally handicapped individuals who, despite their disabilities, are capable of remarkable feats. But back to the matter in hand...

The first track opens with a sound that resonates throughout the album, a sound that conjures feelings of grandeur and regalia in one breath, but falls away whimsically and abashed in the next. Poignant melodies are layered thickly across rhapsodic rolling drums, with superfluous support from a mothership of effect pedals, coupled with a prolific lyricist whose vocals peak the ebb and flow of a dulcet underbelly.

These are words of high acclaim, and I myself feel whimsical and abashed to read back over them. This album is certainly home to some strong components that work well in unison, this is no rudimentary collision of string and cymbal but I can’t help feeling there’s something superficial about it. For all its grandeur and regalia it lacks something integral. It is tied and bound beautifully like a Christmas present you can’t wait to get inside of, but when all those pretty ribbons are unravelled you find that it's another one of those Avon bath salt collections that your twice-removed aunt’s been buying you for the last four years. Disappointment isn’t the word, because after all it’s the thought that always counts. But it is a hollow, lacklustre feeling all the same.

The material of black widows it is not. It will bite, but you will survive it with all nine lives still in tact.