Adam Sweet: Small Town Thinking

Heartfelt blues wails and solos, Mississippi-style, via Devon.

You can trust Louder Our experienced team has worked for some of the biggest brands in music. From testing headphones to reviewing albums, our experts aim to create reviews you can trust. Find out more about how we review.

Singer-songwriter Adam Sweet may have been born and raised in England’s south-west, but he’s got the bluesman thing down to a tee, bellowing out songs about lost love and the life on the blues trail like a New Orleans native.

Sweet is no mere copyist, though: his debut album is stuffed with fresh ideas, allowing his clear vocals and considered guitar melodies to ring out over economical song arrangements. For example, I Work Alone demonstrates his ability to switch from emotion-heavy peaks to subtle reflection, while You Think You’re Lonely is a cooler, more restrained exercise in acoustic introspection.

One minor criticism is the songs on Small Town Thinking can be heard in more or less any blues-friendly pub and club across the country. If Sweet is to rise any further, he’ll need to dig deeper for a more original approach.

Via Neo Music

Joel McIver

Joel McIver is a British author. The best-known of his 25 books to date is the bestselling Justice For All: The Truth About Metallica, first published in 2004 and appearing in nine languages since then. McIver's other works include biographies of Black Sabbath, Slayer, Ice Cube and Queens Of The Stone Age. His writing also appears in newspapers and magazines such as The Guardian, Metal Hammer, Classic Rock and Rolling Stone, and he is a regular guest on music-related BBC and commercial radio.