Having decided to take a break from the whirlwind of the Queen touring machine and the musical theatre stage (Wicked, Cabaret and Jesus Christ Superstar), Adam Lambert returns to the day job with another trip down memory lane, which he has billed as "a little rebirth".
Indeed, after covering his favourites on 2023's Top 5 UK
career chart peak High Drama, Lambert's eponymous sixth album evokes the music he grew up listening to as a
teen in the 90s.
Don't Stop Driving, a sexually charged homage to power
dynamics, appears to borrow its guitars from Paranoid Android, while the
closing Do You See Me Now is a confident slab of big beat indebted to the
superior first wave of EDM.
Elsewhere, Rat City, a spiky celebration of Lambert's recent
move to New York after 20 years in Los Angeles, and Porcelain, an exploration
of toxic masculinity performed with fellow talent show graduate Lexie Liu,
channel the dirty industrial electro of Nine Inch Nails.
The former American Idol contestant occasionally appears to
stray from the brief. The sleek Prince-esque funk of Necklace throws things
back to the 80s and Under The Rhythm samples the annoyingly infectious "La
la la"s from ATC's Y2K Europop hit Around The World.
Regardless of the era that is conjured up, Lambert is in
fine form throughout, whether playing the wounded on Am I OK, a piano ballad
which draws from the recent breakdown of a five-year relationship, or the
vampiric synth-pop of Eat You Alive, one of several cuts which could have been
lifted from Lady Gaga's recent opus.
The former is the only song that backs up Lambert's claims
of toning things down, with Jonas Brothers/Rihanna producer Pete Nappi's
maximalist style very much in keeping with the album's label name.
However, the consistently strong ADAM is equally worthy of
turning all the way up to 11.
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