Album: Adam Snyder

Across The Pond, hti

Adam Snyder joined Mercury Rev just in time to be part of Deserter's Songs, one of the best albums of the Nineties, then quit at the height of the band's success in 2000 to pursue his solo dreams. Across the Pond (it was recorded in London) is the first fruit of that solo career, a lovely, low-key alt.country effort with a winning blend of innocence and experience. Much of the album draws on childhood recollections, with the fond memories of "Mike & Me" prompting the query, "Can we ever be that whole again?" Snyder has more chance of regaining that state of grace than most, if a song such as "Two Moons" is anything to go by: with guitars twinkling like a cloudless night sky, he pursues the soppiest of romantic metaphors in a voice full of innocent wonder. "Bare Bones", a lurching waltz with banjo, displays a comparably wide-eyed, childlike satisfaction with simplicity – "Got no tape and no VCR/ Got no gas 'cause we got no car" – although elsewhere, Snyder's apparent naivety clears occasionally to reveal a darker, more mature apprehension of childhood, most movingly in "Daddy Song", a snapshot of separation that captures a son at the point where he has to grow up in a hurry. "This is where your daddy lives now/ You can have the bed tonight and I'll sleep on the couch," explains the estranged parent, advising his boy, with almost unbearable poignancy, "No need to take your shoes off, this ain't like at your mom's."