Steven Adams, formerly of The Broken Family Band, releases his new album DROPS on Fika Recordings on 10 November 2023. Watch his new video for ‘Heads Keep Rolling’.
Since calling time on The Broken Family Band at the height of their success, Steve Adams has released half a dozen albums under various names (Singing Adams, Steven James Adams, Steven Adams & The French Drops); his witty, incisive lyrics and melodic sensibilities taking in DIY indie rock, folky introspection, and off-kilter pop hooks.
“Every record I’ve made has been in a hurry of some sort,” says Adams of his new album, “and with this one I took my time”. DROPS is the first album to be credited to him as a solo artist since 2016’s Old Magick, his first new music since 2020, and his noisiest record to date.
Armed with a new batch of material, he began by upping sticks to the Welsh countryside to experiment with drummer Daniel Fordham and bassist David Stewart – both formerly of psych oddballs The Drink. The trio then took the songs to Big Jelly, a converted chapel on the south coast, with co-producer Simon Trought (Comet Gain, Johnny Flynn, The Wave Pictures) to lay down the basic tracks for DROPS.
Eschewing a full band set up (“I wanted to concentrate on one thing at a time”), recording sessions in East London followed with Laurie Earle (Absentee) on guitar and Michael Wood (Hayman Kupa Band, Michaelmas) on keyboards.
Adams then took the recordings home and to the French countryside to work alone.“I finally got my head around home recording in 2020, while things were a bit quiet. Once I worked out how to record things I realised I didn’t have to think about time. I could let the songs evolve and change once we had the basic tracks down. After a while I started to think of them as paintings; trying something one morning, painting over it in the afternoon and attempting something completely different… it was about enjoying the process, making some bangers, playing around… and giving Simon the producer a mess to sort out when it came to mixing the record”. Whenever Tom from Fika Recordings checked in to see how the album was progressing Adams would reply, “it’s taking ages but it’ll sound like it was recorded in an afternoon”.
The result is a dynamic and spirited collection of songs, with Adams’s love of 90/00s US underground rock (Pavement’s Bob Nastanovich is a fan) to the fore.
Watch his latest video for ‘Heads Keep Rolling’ on which he told us:
“I found some weird shit on my phone and threw it all into iMovie. This song isn’t really concerned with a linear narrative or making any degree of sense so I think it’s an appropriate use of these images and will hopefully win some awards and cash prizes on the international stage.”
Pre-Order DROPS – https://shop.fikarecordings.com/album/drops