Bil Sabab Power Hour: Barry Adamson - My Friend The Fly

Barry Adamson is cool. He radiates that particular swagger that feels legitimately ultimate.

"My Friend The Fly" is a song from his 2006 album "Stranger on a Sofa", which is one hell of a manic depressive mood-swinging tone-shifting ride.

The song tells a self-contained story about the fly. Not some scientist with a weird head or some other Kafkaesque madness, no, Adamson doesn't need such flashy stuff. Instead he turns on ordinary things and tells a story about a regular insect. But described in a way as if it was as a gangster who does his "things" with a style and definitely has a thing or two against the narrator. He intimidates, threatens and even downright bullies the narrator at multiple occasions. You get the sense that fly is no joke.

The song feels big. It is a little bit of this and a little bit of that and then something completely different rolls over with a bang and you get that raspy "wow!" on the margin. It reminds you of some murky spaces, a bit moist with unpleasant reverberations and sticky surfaces with lots of signs of foots and hands, smudged and distinct. The drum pattern is like scratching brazen rash. First he stomps in conceit before the grinder. For a moment it seems to go gleefully nowhere. Right before he dives into the sonic pandemonium of brass and double bass swirling staircases of notes into the noose that squeezes all the air out of place cleaning it up before the next bout.

It is unsettling. It evokes enpuzzlement and commotion.

Adamson is exceptional at building tension in a composition. He knows when to loose things up and where it must get tighter. The best description of his style is "operatic tongue-in-cheek". It doesn't take itself too seriously but there is imposing darkness hanging around that makes its nonchalant carelessness rather intimidating and quite ominous. He turns mood into a quicksand - it is mesmerizes listener to the point he takes a step towards it and then it swallows him so fast it is unnoticeable and brings him to the other side where things are rough with some bizarre.