September 9th, 2009
Adam Arcuragi Does Daytrotter, And WPRB Tonight
Philly indie-folk/alt-country troubadour Adam Arcuragi just dropped a fantastic sophomore album on High Two Records entitled I Am Become Joy, full of rustic strums and chamber-pop flourishes and vivid, impassioned storytelling. To be honest, I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to his self-titled debut from a few years ago, but this new disc definitely makes me want to go back and re-assess. Arcuragi’s just done a four-song Daytrotter session, which you can check out right here. You can download all the tracks, which I definitely recommend — his bittersweet take on his new “We Steal People’s Medicine (Don’t We?)” is especially riveting. Daytrotter’s Sean Moeller has also penned a pretty captivating accompanying essay, part of which goes like this:
There is a proper and preferred way to belong to this world, to interact with it and as Adam Arcuragi suggests with his not alarmingly magnificent new album, “I Am Become Joy,” those who at one time may have once had brains filled with empty spaces, intuition and magic, now are forced to want short-sighted personal gain, looking for and desiring more money, illusory prosperity and the kind of progress that’s only needed for the judgment of others. It fills them, hollowly, with a sort of air weight that makes them feel stuffed, a popcorn sensation…Arcuragi has such a way of harvesting the chattering teeth, the colder than ice and fear sweats and the jittery nerves, all of which convey an uneasiness and a mild form of desperation – of time slipping like honey through their fingers, only some of the residue does manage to hang onto their hands, just enough to lick and taste slightly.
Arcuragi’s doing a bunch of shows up in New York for CMJ, but he’ll be back in town for a gig at the North Star on October 28th. He’s also scheduled to perform a live set tonight at 8 p.m. on 103.3 WPRB, Princeton University’s radio station, which you can usually pick up no problem in the Philly area.
