Even by
Catherine Wheel's lofty standards,
Adam and Eve is boldly realized. It's infused with unusual moods, textures, and ambitious touches -- such as built-up volume shifts, or keyboards and acoustic guitars that suggest endless wide-open spaces. The album is also an impressive thematic whole formed by two untitled tracks that start and finish the LP, with gentle connectors between songs in which chords of one tune drift quietly into the start of the next. In markedly lowering the volume throughout large passages of the album, they shine the spotlight on singer/guitarist
Rob Dickinson, who alternates his smooth, cool, meditative cooing with a more yearning, emotional, arresting wail. Other guitarist
Brian Futter, bassist Dave Hawes, and drummer
Neil Sims negotiate a maze of hues and tints, from peaceful, pretty solitude to the most desperate pathos. 1996's release of
Like Cats and Dogs (a collection culled from the group's more ponderous, subdued, nearly ambient B-sides) precipitated the album's more restrained approach and more ambitious scope. More importantly, like much of
Like Cats and Dogs, the LP is again greatly influenced by
Talk Talk's
Spirit of Eden and
Laughing Stock. So it's significant that
Talk Talk's
Tim Friese-Greene, who'd already produced
Ferment and played on
Happy Days, was called in again to play keyboards and ended up playing a major role in the album's sound, along with vaunted
Pink Floyd producer
Bob Ezrin and
Garth Richardson. The more moody, reflective qualities that resulted are evident throughout, in the low-rumbling crash of "Broken Nose," the twinkling tones of "Ma Solituda," the near-
Pink Floyd pastoral sweep of "Future Boy," the whimsical, throbbing ecstasy of "Delicious" and "Satellite," and the penultimate epic space-floaters, "Goodbye" and "For Dreaming." To put it bluntly,
Adam and Eve is brilliant -- as playful as it is gripping, and as sweet as it is contentious. ~ Jack Rabid