Album: Adam ‘n’ Eve

About the album

The follow up to Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves, Adam ‘n’ Eve, produced by Flood, Dave Bascombe and Hal Willner, sees Gavin Friday exploring the pop and glam obsessions of his youth, with guest performances by Maria McKee and backing vocals by U2’s The Edge and Bono.

Q magazine praised its “cache of vignettes, crammed with opulent details like Saint Divine’s soul shimmer and flamenco flourishes.”

Adam ‘n’ Eve was reissued on iTunes on October 24, 2011.

From the 1992 press release:

With his new album, Adam ‘N’ Eve. Friday sets out to recapture some of the glamour and vision that pop music has lost, a mission which took the singer back to some of his boyhood idols. Adam ‘N’ Eve is like a weird color Xerox of the last 15 years of what Gavin Friday’s been through, almost the regret for the paradise lost of pop. Adam ‘N’ Eve dredges up the battered remains of Gavin’s adolescent pop past, alongside of the “glam” rock trash aesthetic.

Adam ‘N’ Eve touches on various buried reference points, from Erik Satie to Burt Bacharach. The brooding introspection of the debut has been replaced by a panoramic vision where the extremes of sexual obsession and surrealist humor collide – often in the space of one song. “Pop music should be about something romantic, something huge, something tragic and brilliant, a planned accident.” The planned accidents on Adam ‘N’ Eve turned out to be as brilliant as anyone could have wished.

Produced by Hal Willner, Flood and Dave Bascombe, Adam ‘N’ Eve is a widely ambitious affair whose reference points encompass the glam savagery of “King of Trash” and the Euro melancholy of “I Want to Live.” Friday’s lyrical moods, meanwhile, swing all the way from the bawdy ‘Dublinese’ (“We give good mouth,” grins Friday) of “Fun & Experience” to “Falling Off the Edge of the World’s” fatalism. The latter track, a spectacular duet with American exile Maria McKee (Lone Justice), is dryly described by Friday as “‘I Got You Babe’ in Hell.” “I had it in my mind to do a duet with Maria since we worked together on an AIDS benefits. I liked the chalk and cheese element, I thought it would be a challenge.”

“We recorded ‘Falling Off…’ during the Gulf war; when you’re in the studio nothing else exists except yourself and your art, that type of crap. You’re cut off and obsessed, your only connection with reality is TV, so the lyrics are like a remote control on the world. At the time I couldn’t believe the ‘unrealness’ of how everything was being portrayed on CNN.”

Gavin’s working class aesthetic (he was raised in Dublin’s Northside, is sworn to fight the consensus of mediocrity that’s stifling music in the 90’s, particularly the era’s blatant anti song ethic.

“I’m a big traditionalist whether it comes from Cole Porter or Kurt Weill, a great bleedin’ lyric that says something, that can transcend a political stance.” Still Friday resolutely refuses to plan his next move. “I don’t know; I’m just following my own instincts. I’ve got a feeling [ the next album ] might be a little bit more aggressive, but who knows…”

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