New York‘s Adam Finchler works across music, video and DIY art, but no matter the medium, his work all stems from a creative desire to explore the stranger side of life to better figure out its complexities. “Adam has always found a way to take the absurd and elevate it to an art,” as Don Giovanni Records co-founder Joe Steinhardt so succinctly puts it. Whether Finchler is playing drums for Sea Urchin (Ba Da Bing Records), making videos for the likes of Ought and Charlotte Cornfield, starring in them for Katie Von Schleicher, or releasing clickbait videos and a book “of haunted hayriders’ quotations overheard by the grim reaper himself,” his overarching mission shines through.
Next month, Adam Finchler will release his debut full-length The Room to further expand his output. Building upon the humour and introspection of debut EP Hair Gimmicks of Apathy, the record finds Finchler drawing on the full breadth of his artistic sensibilities to better evoke the oddities of everyday life. Take opener ‘Eye Massage’, where the deadpan post-punk spirit sounds at once ominous and wryly funny. Finchler manages to explore the subjectivity and misinformation with hardly more than a handful of words, repeated and repeated and repeated like the sonification of the marketing messages that bombard us every waking minute.
We have a coupon for an eye massage
Redeem it
Watch the video directed by Matt Strickland below:
But don’t be fooled into thinking the sardonic and humorous nature of the album means The Room is without sincere emotion. Because while that constitutes a big part of Adam Finchler’s work, there’s always a sense of earnestness too. The title track exemplifies this side of his work, a slice of sincere if slightly surreal folk which delves into the disembodied feeling which can accompany life’s major changes. As though to experience a transition from one stage to the next is to in some way become a ghostly figure. One lacking substance to live up to the promise of the future, and unable to cease its haunting of those spaces of the past.
So I moved into a new house down the street
But the old one’s still the best place for my bike
And all of my possessions are still there
But I don’t have my old key and I have to
Leave the front door open to get in
Watch the video directed by Stephanie Delazeri below:
The Room is out via Window Sill Records on the 12th July and you can pre-order it now.