On Famous Blondes, Adam Payne summons up an imaginary internal myth-making Los Angeles, standing over-dressed, unshod, & sun-caked. No genre, style, or sound is hands-off.  There’s the late-night folk funk of “Tell Me” & “Nightmare” , the ham-fisted fey glam of “Eyes of the World”, the neon go-kart slow burner “U. Angel”, even doo-wop filth in “Open Up”.  While he reaches back to the origins of rock ‘n’roll, before the confusion of tongues, this LP concurrently stands as a tribute to the present tense.  Denuded of pomp, the free-range honeyed melodies blow from every bodily humor. Rinky dink keys tap along the highway shoulder. Layered guitar leads tunnel through alien lakeside causeways.  Sampled rhythms tumble down the chaparral.

Over the last 13 years, he’s had over a dozen releases while fronting the slippery and misaligned “live-action-psychedelic-mix-tape-of-a-band”, Residual Echoes.  Ever the worker, this multi-instrumentalist also spends time working with a list of seemingly disparate artists including but not limited to 6 Organs of Admittance, Gun Outfit, King Tuff, Lorelle Meets The Obsolete, Cass McCombs, & Hepa/Titus.

As one listens, a multitude emerges: Egyptian princesses, ice cream men, cigarette girls and hijras dance in a multiracial, beach-salted crowd acculturated to the polyglot musics of the La Brea Tar Pits and Angeles Forest. Everyone is right on time. These ten songs are hard cash in the economy of souls. You can’t escape your parents’ record collection by listening to vaporwave, because vaporwave has taken its place in the eternal order. It’s a pity postmodernism can suck, but at least there’s this disc for a consolation prize….You can almost picture him streaking the Malibu Mountain Colony houses of Herbie Hancock and the late Ronnie Montrose, pausing only to eat their lunches.

QUOTES:
“Another great whacked slab of zero-gravity pop assemblage from Adam Payne. The album shimmers with style-ghosts of Van Dyke Parks, Bob Markley, Albert Marcoeur and other great historical left-fielders, without surrendering an inch of Adam’s own strange and original vision.” – Byron Coley

“Free your mind with the music of Adam Payne and history stops dead. This music will cure you of time, gentle people.” —Julian Cope

“Famous Blondes is a flawless masterpiece.” —Oliver Hall, Dangerous Minds