Ford Pier's Adventurism seethes with anxiety and bitter frustration

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      Ford Pier
      Adventurism (Red Cat)

      Beneath the placid exterior of Ford Pier, guitarist for hire and dapper man about town, lies a seething pit of peevish anxiety and bitter frustration. Or so it would seem from Adventurism, which apparently came close to being called Torture Is the New Anal. Pier's alternative title gives a clue as to his preoccupations here: disgust with the world's many stupidities, leavened with the kind of misanthropy that doesn't shy away from self-loathing.

      This is not the kind of record that's going to leave listeners with warm-and-fuzzy feelings of well-being, then. In fact, Pier's song “Sick of the Good Times” is a fairly explicit attack on the notion that music should be fun and that musicians are, at heart, empathy merchants: “I'm not a storyteller/I don't have any stories/One or two, but nothing worth the mention/Nothing to reward your rapt attention.”

      Instead, he seems to see songwriting as a way of venting his anger: at bar stars and wannabes (“My New Bar”), at the growth economy (“The Oft-Cited ”˜Laws of Physics' ”), at his own failings (“So Many”). The music itself, though, is fiercely imaginative, a caustic mix of art-rock precision and punk-rock abandon that's perfectly suited to Pier's lyrical blend of sharp insight and tortured complaint.

      Soothing his sound isn't, but in its honesty and occasional wisdom, Adventurism might just be the best bad time you'll have all year.

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