Adrianne – Sweet Mistake
Wheat Recording Company (released 08/12/06)
Acoustic Pop/Folk-Rock
Adrianne, who goes only by her first name, may not be a household name now, but there’s no reason to why she shouldn’t be. She has been performing and opening for various acts such as Jeff Buckley, Michelle Malone, Colin Hay (Men at Work), Kristen Hall, Matt Nathanson and Tracy Bonham. Adrianne’s strengths are in her songwriting and her voice that is smokey like Norah Jones, vulnerable yet undeniably strong as Melissa Ferrick’s and Emm Gryner’s. Sweet Mistake could best be described as your boyfriend or girlfriend’s favorite over-sized shirt you wear when they are away and you try to carry on through your day with their scent mingling with yours.
Adrianne has the power to carry you with her voice through a scene of emotions that she presents in Sweet Mistake. The first song, “Disarray”, describes exactly what it feels like to be unarmored, disappointed, and conflicted (“i was strewn across your living room/ but you never did know what to do/ about me and you”). She can give strong acoustic folk-rock performances, but it’s the vulnerability conveyed with the simple combination of her voice and the piano, or voice and guitar, like in “Symmetry” that make this such a beautiful album. Her lyrics are strong and applies to the everyday person who has found their person who accepts them for who they are: “nobody frees me like you do/ nobody sees and sees right through/ the last and the first/ the best and the worst/ in me, like symmetry/ is you.”
“Who You’ve Become” stirs action in the listener, that could easily be a top 40 single and a music video on VH1, with a uptempo beat about no longer being the one for someone else who doesn’t know how good they are. “Gone for Good” is a incredible track about pretending it’s not over between two people, the emotional becoming empty but not wanting it to be hard, when it’s clearly over. “Shooting” is upbeat and the most pop-influenced song on the record, while “Leavin’ Alone” sounds like it should be covered by someone else; a compliment to Adrianne’s songwriting abilities to be flexible with her own style and what another style could bring to the song. “Sweet Mistake” and “Castle” sound too closely alike to be immediately following each other, but “sweet mistake” is the stronger of the two tracks. I would have saved “castle” for another release. A surprise was Adrianne’s cover of “Blister in the Sun”—done in the style of Emm Gryner or Cat Power—that works as a acoustic trance, subtle pop track.
Sweet Mistake is a strong effort by a very capable songwriter and diversely talented Adrianne; casual and comfortable, not over-the-top, with a very honest voice that speaks to the heart about the every “about me and you” of each of our own life experiences.
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