{"id":733,"date":"2021-09-07T06:52:41","date_gmt":"2021-09-07T06:52:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wmcn.fm\/?p=733"},"modified":"2021-12-29T03:43:36","modified_gmt":"2021-12-29T03:43:36","slug":"review-american-aquarium-w-adeem-the-artist-the-turf-club-9-4-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wmcn.fm\/?p=733","title":{"rendered":"Review: American Aquarium w\/ Adeem the Artist @ the Turf Club"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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My relationship with live concerts has been somewhat of a slow burn. I didn\u2019t go to a lot of them growing up because very few of my favorite acts would ever think of going to the third largest city in Missouri (I get it.) Also, as an anxious introvert, voluntarily throwing myself into a loud and chaotic crowd usually takes extra convincing and mental preparation. That\u2019s probably why it took me until my sophomore year to finally start going to shows in the Twin Cities. I only got to go to a few before touring came to a halt as the rest of the world shut down for the next year and a half, but now we\u2019re back!!! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My first concert since the start of the pandemic was also my first time at the Turf Club. The venue\u2019s been around since the 1940s, and the wall that I sat up against was filled from top to bottom with framed posters from old shows and photos of what the venue looked like over the years. The floor in front of me started to fill up a little bit by the time that night\u2019s opener, Adeem the Artist, walked on stage. <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Many of the American Aquarium fans in the room probably hadn\u2019t heard of Adeem Maria, the seventh-generation North Carolinian who now resides in East Tennessee, before that night, but many were bound to walk out a fan. I had only gotten around to listening to their most recent album Cast Iron Pansexual<\/em> two days before the show, and it\u2019s already probably one of my favorite albums of the year. The album itself is a witty and poignant exploration of identity \u201cin relationship with the archetypal ruins of the Southeast United States,\u201d as stated on the artist\u2019s website. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Adeem started their set with the opening track from that album called \u201cI Never Came Out\u201d with an unassuming and humorous honesty that just immediately pulled you in as an audience member. The room got to know Adeem more as they performed other songs from Cast Iron Pansexual<\/em> before transitioning into one of the most entertaining renditions of Garth Brook\u2019s \u201cThe Thunder Rolls\u201d that I have ever heard (Hot Country Knight\u2019s parody \u201cThen It Rained\u201d<\/a> being another obvious contender), laying thick on the song\u2019s ridiculous yet classic melodrama with audible thunder noises and spoken asides.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Another highlight from the set was \u201cI Wish You Would\u2019ve Been A Cowboy\u201d, the obvious standout from an album filled with a lot of great songs. If the Garth Brooks cover didn\u2019t already make it clear, Adeem the Artist is someone who was influenced and grew up on 90s\/early 2000s country radio, and it comes out in this song in the form of frustration and disappointment towards an artist that was very prominent in that era; and you\u2019re just going to have to listen to it to figure out who it is because my jaw dropped under my mask as I listened to it for the first time on a bus ride home, and I\u2019m not about to deprive some people of a similar experience. The opening set concluded with American Aquarium (minus frontman BJ Barham) joining Adeem for a full-band rendition of John Prine\u2019s \u201cLake Marie.\u201d The last thing that I can say about the night\u2019s opener is that you should stream Cast Iron Pansexual<\/em> right now, plain and simple. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The floor of the Turf Club filled in any sorts of gaps that may have been there before just in time for American Aquarium. I probably wasn\u2019t as acquainted with the North Carolina alt-country band\u2019s discography as the rest of the crowd, but Lamentations<\/em> was one of my favorite albums of last year, and I had become a fan with their previous album Things Change<\/em> in 2018. I may not have known the words to every song, but it was great to watch those in the audience that did: the excitement felt in shouting out the hook \u201cI’m just a casualty of rock and roll\u201d in the first song \u201cCasualties\u201d from their breakout 2012 album Burn. Flicker. Die.<\/em> and the fists pumped up in the air during \u201cThe World Is On Fire\u201d \u2026 man, I\u2019ve missed that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Most of American Aquarium\u2019s set seamlessly transitioned from one song to the next, but the few times that BJ Barham would speak to the crowd included entertaining anecdotes about the number of local Jucy Lucy burgers he had had earlier that day (mental note to go to Boomin\u2019 Barbecue at some point: check), past audience interactions, and the satisfaction felt at making people cry while performing \u201cUnfortunate Kind.\u201d Throughout the set, I made note of unfamiliar songs that I wanted to check out later like \u201cHurricane\u201d from their 2010 album Small Town Hymns<\/em> while being reacquainted with personal favorites like \u201cA Better South.\u201d The show concluded with one of the songs that the band recorded on their recent 90s country covers album Slappers, Bangers & Certified Twangers, Vol. 1<\/em>: the late Joe Diffie\u2019s \u201cJohn Deere Green.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The thing that left the biggest impression on me from the set was the band\u2019s musicianship, and I\u2019m not just talking about individual skill (though Neil Jones\u2019 steel guitar playing was certainly a highlight as someone who\u2019s a sucker for a good steel guitar line.) It\u2019s the joy that radiates while they just jam out with each other that then feeds into the audience and then back to the band in a continuous feedback loop. It\u2019s something that demands to be felt when an artist and audience come together in the same room to enjoy making and listening to the music that they love. It\u2019s a feeling that\u2019s been tucked away for over a year, and it\u2019s surreal to finally be able to get it back (in a safe manner, of course.)<\/p>\n
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My relationship with live concerts has been somewhat of a slow burn. I didn\u2019t go to a lot of them growing up because very few of my favorite acts would … Read moreReview: American Aquarium w\/ Adeem the Artist @ the Turf Club<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":738,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[117,116,53,24,52,28,96,115],"class_list":["post-733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-concert-review","tag-adeem-the-artist","tag-american-aquarium","tag-americana-music","tag-concert-review","tag-country-music","tag-folk","tag-rock","tag-turf-club"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wmcn.fm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wmcn.fm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wmcn.fm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wmcn.fm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wmcn.fm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=733"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.wmcn.fm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":909,"href":"https:\/\/www.wmcn.fm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733\/revisions\/909"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wmcn.fm\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wmcn.fm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wmcn.fm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wmcn.fm\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}