Adam McIntyre was born in Alabama at the end of the 1970s, during what music scholars have called “a difficult time”; Punk was thinking about becoming New Wave, Arena Rock was giving way to Yacht Rock, and Disco only confused a generation who wanted to dance and do copious piles of coke. It was in this environment that Adam’s parents brought him home and force-fed him lots of Hard Rock and Psychedelic music. He led a childhood that echoed, in many ways, the Finch children’s in “To Kill A Mockingbird” – except without neighbors, other kids to play with or a lengthy murder trial.
Adam migrated to Nashville, Tennessee for college, where he found himself in several bands and racked up hundreds of hours of recording session experience and found himself performing dozens of live shows each year. In 2000, Adam found himself on top of Mp3.com’s Power-Pop charts for his single, “Too Far Gone”. Adam recorded several unreleased albums’ worth of material over the next two years honing his songwriting skills and emerged in 2003 with a full-length album of tongue-in-cheek Glam Rock, Americana and Pop called “Rockstars & Superheroes”. Touring took him as far North as Chicago and as far East as London, England.
Eschewing his live band in favor of one-man recording conceptual artists like Todd Rungren, Adam performed his gargantuan 17-song concept album “Nothing Means Anything” in 2004 under the production of Headphone Treats head Jimmy Ether. Due to the birth of Adam’s son and death of his Father that same year, the disc was released in mid-2005. Its genre-hopping storytelling recounts a year of Adam’s life in which he experiences loss, redemption and new love.
Worn out by the colossal task of writing and recording “Nothing Means Anything”, Adam began to work on a series of EPs with the idea of having “shorter, stranger, more focused bursts” of music. Touring extensively as a sideman (on a secondary instrument – bass), he found time to grieve, undergo a long-needed tonsillectomy, settle into life as a father and record his strongest, most focused effort to date, “Per Ardua”. From the deceptively gentle beginning of “Together and Alone” to the primal climax of “Proscription Day”, this five-song EP traverses a winding course between emotional baggage and light-hearted comic sensibility. “America”, a song about a nearly disastrous trip to England, is angular pop featuring classical guitars and counter-melodic bass over frantic drums. Devo’s “Girl U Want”, while faithfully recreated, draws more from British Invasion-cum-punk than new wave. “Liquid Girlfriend” sees McIntyre behind vintage keyboards and manning harmonized guitars — the effect is pleasantly surreal.
Once again, Adam covers most of the instrumental bases on the record, and this also marks his first self-produced effort. With strength of voice and a focused sonic vision, McIntyre raises his own bar with Per Ardua. But it would seem that what Per Ardua has in spades is great songs. We really hope you enjoy it.
Adam is currently recording the second in his series of EPs.
