Search - Adam Marsland :: Hello Cleveland

Why a new Adam Marsland CD, just 5 months after his multi-layered double GO WEST - a satirical indie-rock album recorded in less than 8 hours?Maybe something just snapped.When L.A. indie pop songwriter Adam Marsland released GO WEST last August, at first all went well a top 25 placing on Amazon and a slew of rave reviews. But with the album's broad range and scope it did not break through to a wider audience. On the road, he wound up back in the same tiny clubs he started out at, playing to unreceptive crowds for little or no money.Maybe something just snapped. Or maybe, as he blogged, ''I wanted to do something more productive with this band than lose money playing for people that didn't care.'' Maybe he reasoned that if no one was listening, then he could say whatever he wanted. Regardless, Marsland announced his intention to record an entire NEW album the following week, on the band's day off. Where are the songs? asked his band. He hadn't written them yet. No sweat.In the next few days, in the van, at clubs and crash pads, Adam and his band worked up 14 new songs 180 degrees from the layered, thoughtful pop of GO WEST. Liberated by his own obscurity, Marsland shouts: ''no one ever gets the point anyway/I got nothin' to lose, man, so I won't play/The worst thing that I ever did/was tell the truth!'' and proceeds to take vicious aim at the sorry state of rock 'n' roll and a society obsessed with trivia, itself, and celebrity (but that could care less about celebrities as real people).Incredibly, Hello Cleveland was recorded in exactly 7 hours and 47 minutes (by comparison, the Beatles' Please Please Me album took 9 ½ hours, and they knew the songs), and the results, which only needed minor editing, don't need to be graded on any curve. The sharp, spontaneous band performances harken back to Marsland's punk days with Cockeyed Ghost, with some Descendents and Frank Zappa thrown in the mix. The sound, courtesy of death metal producer Bill Korecky (Mushroomhead), is both immediate and larger than life. The songs speak for themselvesa blistering, 30-minute screed that if nothing else cements Marsland's reputation as a totally unique - and mostly overlooked - voice in music.