AM

"Muted electric guitar and understated, Beck-like vocals pave the road into AM’s musical world. Once you’re firmly rooted, he’ll hit you with the one-two punch of well-crafted songs and unbeatable melodies."
– Performing Songwriter

From the opening seconds of Troubled Times, the debut CD from Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter AM, you’re in a different world, as beautiful as heartbreak and enduring as memory.

Familiar echoes haunt this landscape, but these are evidence of inspiration more than imitation. Clearly there’s something new in the strong melodies, vivid textures, and eloquent insights that play throughout Troubled Times – something that, as one writer has observed, provides a "missing link" between Coldplay and Wilco, with ample dashes of Beck, Bowie, and other classic elements too elusive to identify.

It is, in fact, the sound of AM, arguably the most original writer/performer to emerge from L.A. in a decade. Troubled Times (Defend Music) opens with the hypnotic, sing-song figure “Gone Away,” a meditation on staying mired too long in painful relationships. Troubled Times continues to lead us past images of loneliness, of "cities so bright" yet enveloped in darkness and into moments of painful candor ("I keep running away, even from the good things"). Think of these songs, then, as postcards from dark and dreamy places, where isolation and confusion aren’t dead ends but reasons to savor what life dishes out.

AM was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma and at the age of 13 his family relocated to the suburbs of New Orleans. Taking refuge in his guitar, AM played throughout high school. While attending college at Loyola University New Orleans, he started writing songs, inspired equally by his own reflective temperament, by the literature and texts he studied as he earned his philosophy degree, and by the music he absorbed simply by living in New Orleans. To this day New Orleans is a source of deep emotion for AM. Always eager to lend his voice to charitable causes, AM has performed at numerous fundraisers and is dedicated to the rebuilding of his home city.

After moving to Los Angeles, AM began working out his songs encouraged by Gary Jules, a songwriter responsible for starting a haven for musicians at the then newly formed Hotel Café, and a friendship with Jamie Myerson, a respected solo artist and producer who has worked with Duncan Sheik, David Poe, Paul Oakenfold, and Sneaker Pimps.

Writing at home, he nurtured his unique style through a combination of meaning, poetry, and sound and began recording the results in his bedroom. AM eventually brought his homebrew discs to Myerson’s studio, where he and the producer explored their potential to grow within ambitious, expanded settings. Aside from some bass lines and drums, they cut every new part themselves, vocal and instrumental. "Jamie knew how to embrace the darker side of what I do," AM points out, "from the long reverbs to the creepy synthesizer pads in the distance. It was a perfect partnership."

Upon finishing the music that would become Troubled Times, the reception in his current home of Los Angeles has been considerably welcoming. Through podcasts of his appearances on KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic he earned an invitation to perform in the U.K.; Luna Records, based in Scotland, signed him and released Troubled Times throughout Great Britain in July. Back in the States, he stirred strong responses at the South by Southwest Music Festival, after which Defend Music welcomed him into their fold. Television and film picked up on the buzz; and in a matter of months AM’s songs were heard in indie films at every major film festival in the U.S. and Canada including the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, and on television including HBO’s Big Love and MTV’s The Real World – at least 17 placements from this 10-song album as of this writing.

Accolades began to pile up, hailing AM as "mellow gold" (Louisiana Music Export) and "instantly classic" (LA Weekly) destined to "climb the ranks to the top" (Performing Songwriter) with "the look of a movie star and the sound of a rock star" (Indie Hype), while lauding his music for its “deep soulful insights” (Music Connection) or marveling that "I haven’t heard such passion and integrity in music in a while" (Tuned in Music).

Today, having been tapped for the LA Weekly Music Awards Best Singer/Songwriter of the Year 2005, AM has earned opportunities to expand his horizons with film and television scoring already in the works. But, he promises, writing and performing will be at the heart of whatever he does. It’s almost as if he has no choice, not as long as new songs keep demanding his attention – not as long as shadows remain, past the edge of town or within the unquiet soul.

 DEFEND RELEASES

Catalog Number:
DFN80016
Title:
Troubled Times
Release Date:
October 2006

Track List
01. Gone Away
02. Playing the Game
03. Troubled Times
04. So Lonely
05. Running Away
06. Mainstay
07. City Syndrome
08. Wayside
09. Home
10. Losing You