Adam Sultan
Heinous Acts of Love (Pressing) There’s something amiss with Adam Sultan’s solo debut, Heinous Acts of Love. It plays like a lackluster film soundtrack. This comes as something of a surprise considering that Sultan, along with producer Eliot Haynes, has spent many years in the local theatre scene scoring plays. Here, however, his creation is lacking, as in the tracks don’t create a feeling so much as they fill empty space. The overlong and repetitive “Winterchant” is a perfect example: a mediocre song played quietly in the background. This overrepetition plagues Heinous Acts of Love. The “Introduction” is a tease, really – psychobilly riffs melting into Angelo Badalamenti bass and vocals. “You’ve Got the Gin” and its neighbor “Limbo” both have a Cure for Pain, but Sultan doesn’t ooze charisma like Morphine’s Mark Sandman did. “American Pimp” would be at home on a late-Nineties Sugar Ray album, while “Mexican Girls” could be in a Harry Connick Jr. Vegas revue. “Swinging Chad,” though – an instrumental number featuring a Tosca live take, xylophones, and horns – is a well-placed moment of clarity, and “Yellow Violet Brown” bops with a Fifties riff behind contemporary dissonant vocals and creative barbershop harmonies. The musicianship on this album is prime, but Sultan didn’t take advantage of it. Instead, he oversang and overdid the majority of the album. More piano and strings and fewer lyrical recounts could’ve made for a huge sound and an emotional album.
This article appears in February 27 • 2004.