Reviews – Adam Arcuragi
Author: Mike Conklin
Source: L Magazine
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Reviews – Adam Arcuragi
Author: Brian McMurray
Source: Harmonium
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There’s a reason some artists are dubbed with the title of singer/songwriter. Let’s face it, there are a lot of musicians that both sing and write their own music, but not all of them are considered singer/songwriters. It’s no surprise that most singer/songwriters use little more than some acoustic guitar and their natural talent. That’s really all they need. Singer/songwriters are artists who are incredibly gifted on both accounts, and Adam Arcuragi is one of these artists.
The interesting thing about Arcuragi’s self-titled debut is that these facets of his talent seem to be showcased on different songs. Take the opening track “All the Bells” for instance. The songwriting here is as good as on any other track, but Arcuragi’s slightly gritty rasp combined with the mid-tempo melody obscures the solid songwriting. The listener finds themselves paying more attention to the music than the lyrics, perhaps rightfully so.
Recorded as almost an afterthought, “1981” is more of the same. Arcuragi has admitted his voice was a little shot at the time he recorded the track, but it gives the song some extra personality as he belts “Between you and me / I’ll be singing through my teeth / And smiling as I go / And the words may all be wrong / But I still sing every song / my last breath will lay low.” Still, I found myself tapping to the beat rather than singing along with the excellent lyrics.
On the other side of the spectrum, tracks like the aptly-titled “Delicate” and “Part of the Sky” are considerably slower, and Arcuragi’s voice loses its grit, thus it is much easier to fully digest the lyrics present. “Delicate” swoons along beautifully as Eve Miller (Matt Pond PA), Mike Kennedy (Audible, Mazarin, Lefty’s Deceiver), and Peter Wonsowski add some cello, guitar, and singing saw respectively. “Part of the Sky” is just Arcuragi, an acoustic guitar, and some songwriting that’s impossible to ignore.
It’s a song about death, but it’s an accepted view of death. Maybe even a hopeful one as many of the lyrics such as “The part of the sky where the sun / Comes up is where someday / I will eventually to by / But please celebrate don’t be sad / Cause I will meet you there / And like the locusts we can sing until we die” indicate.
When the album does add extra instrumentation, it’s added in just the right places, as with the aforementioned “Delicate” or the slick Wurlitzer on “Little Yellow Boat”. What results is a self-titled debut that’s personal and beautiful. It’s hard to deny Arcuragi’s talent, and his debut has christened the birth of another amazing singer/songwriter for us to drown our tears in.
Reviews – Adam Arcuragi
| Author: John Schacht Source: All Music Guide Link to this article The debut full-length from Philadelphia singer/songwriter Adam Arcuragi is the sonic cousin to the melancholic folk of Nick Drake and current sepia-tinged fellow travelers like Mark Kozelek, Damien Jurado, acoustic Chris Mills, and Dolorean. Like the latter’s debut, Not Exotic, it’s predominantly gentle, minor key acoustics and literate narratives that veil a vaguely religious undertow. On Arcuragi’s softer cuts, he employs a whisper uncannily like Kozelek‘s; when the songs increase tempo and the finger-picking turns to hearty strumming, Arcuragi’s voice develops an adenoidal pinch much like early Jurado. What often distinguish these songs are the accents: disc opener “All the Bells” features sumptuous vibraphone chimes from Michael Spinka; lap steel from Ryan McClaughlin and graceful cello from Eve Miller (Rachel’s) frame the country shuffle “Delicate”; and Wurlitzer (Charlie Hall, Windsor the Derby) highlights “Little Yellow Boat.” Elsewhere, singing saw and E-Bowed guitars flesh out the compositions. But Arcuragi’s songs are strong enough to stand on their own merits; over half of them surpass five minutes, yet none feel too long. “Part of the Sky” and “The Dog Is Dead, Amen” are transcendent, recalling the sparse glory of Drake‘s Pink Moon, just Arcuragi’s wraith-like vocals and intricate acoustic finger-picking, while “Broken Throat” soars like the best Mills on the strength of enthusiastic handclaps and backing harmonies. The accompanying press lists Arcuragi as a prize-winning poet, which partially explains Rimbaud’s cameo in “1981” or the arcane “odalisque” that appears in “Part of the Sky.” But the intimate narratives about transitory childhood memories, young love lost, and mortality virtually preclude pretension. There is unbridled joy inherent in even the saddest of these songs, and unforgettable images in almost every verse. When Arcuragi sings, “I’d taut myself like the high E-string/So that when you pluck, I sing” (“The Christmas Song”), “I will shake the boughs ’til you come down/Sending the birds into the air like black fire against the sun” (“Broken Throat”), or “Singing through my teeth/And smiling as I go” (“1981”), his elation is contagious. An impressive debut from a promising talent. |
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Reviews – Adam Arcuragi
Author: Steve Klinge
Source: Magnet Magazine Mar 2006
“Adam Arcuragi sings with an impassioned edge that owes a little to both Jeff Mangum and Conor Oberst, and his songs tend toward discursive, stream-of-consciousness forms.”
Reviews – Make A Rising
Author: Greg Prato
Source: All Music Guide
“Picture an amalgamation of Captain Beefheart, Sun Ra Arkestra, the Beach Boys circa Pet Sounds, Radiohead, and the Flaming Lips, and you’d still only be touching the tip of the iceberg. Strap yourself in and get prepared for a wild and wooly sonic ride, especially on such standouts as “Look at my Hawk” and “Lovely It May Seem.” Make a Rising is certainly not your average band, and as expected, Rip Through the Hawk Black Night is not your average rock release.”
Reviews – Make a Rising
Author: Jennifer Kelly
Source: Popmatters.com Feb 2006
“This is a beautiful, complicated mess of an album, and it gets more interesting every time you put it on.”
Reviews – Make a Rising
Author:
Source: Washington Post
“The group does work more in movements than songs, and it takes a stab at just about every genre. Classical, cabaret, hardcore, prog, folk — it’s all there.”
Reviews – Make A Rising
Author: Christian Carey
Source:Copper Press Fall 2005
Cooing vocals are set against bumptious piano licks, discordant electronics, and animated drumming in the psych-calliope ambiance … Make a Rising is never so obsessed with eccentricity that they can’t make memorable music along the way.
Reviews – Make A Rising
Author: Hank Shteamer
Source: Time Out: New York , Sept 2005
“Philly’s Make a Rising can genre-splice with the best of ’em; Rip Through the Hawk Black Night traverses melancholy Beach Boys harmonies, chilly music concrète and clattery prog rock. But that’s not what makes the band special: For all their schizo tendencies, MAR’s songs maintain beautiful, compelling narrative threads that transcend any particular musical style.”
Reviews – Make A Rising
Author: Michael A. Parker
Source: D.M.G. Newsletter May 2005
I’m completely in love with this album. I keep it by my stereo at all times. I could easily write a few pages about this astonishingly original experimental chamber rock pop naive song prog cinema music, but space is limited here, so let’s do the quick-and-dirty name game. My research reveals the following major influences on these young multi-media art eccentrics from Philadelphia: The Beach Boys, The Ruins, Van Dyke Parks, Henry Cow, Cheer Accident (especially “Enduring the American Dream”), 10CC (getting into this band was the major musical turning point in life for one member), Gentle Giant, Van Morrison. “Impossible bedfellows,” you say? That’s why I said “astonishingly original”!! Here’s my best formula after months of analysis: Gastr Del Sol + ELO + Robert Wyatt’s “Rock Bottom”, all noted especially for their extremely unconventional song structure. In fact, this album is like a suite of about 20 different moods and styles in a non-repeating sequence. Though often absent for long stretches, vocals are critical; they’re boyish, charming, and earnest, sometimes accompanied by banjo or piano and sometimes decked out in fabulous harmony parts. Instrumentation in rough order of significance: keyboards, electric guitar, drumkit, bass guitar, violin, banjo, trumpet, saxophone, studio trickery.
They rock out avant-prog style in short bursts here and there, and I want to make special mention of one instrumental track that’s an absolutely orgasmic marriage of RIO and math rock, starting out with something that could almost be from Fred Frith’s “Gravity” and then moving into slashing, dramatic stop-start attacks and cross-rhythms. But that’s a bit of an exception for the album, which is pretty dreamy and drifty overall. Make A Rising is the best thing to happen to experimental pop music since Animal Collective started writing actual songs, and I’d call it the best ambitious song album since Mr. Bungle’s “California”, compared to which it’s homey, introspective, whimsical, and delicate, and without the virtuosity, bombast, quotations, or big-budget sheen, but with the same level of epic, creative, bizarre songwriting.