Terminally Employed: The Gobsmacked Ivory Salesmen's debut album | The Scene
Do you know that feeling of walking into your regular pub (in my case, that's Mooney's here in Ho Chi Minh City), and running into some legendary bantering friends?
That's the feeling I get when I listen to The Gobsmacked Ivory Salesmen's debut album: Terminally Employed. In the first-ever edition of The Scene, I'll be exploring the soundscapes that Adam, the bandleader in The Gobsmacked Ivory Salesmen delivers.
Terminally Employed | The Gobsmacked Ivory Salesmen
Stream the brand-new debut album on YouTube and Spotify. Support independent live music in Ho Chi Minh City.
A Little Context First
Saigon is a massive city, and one of the densest on Earth. Sometimes it's intimidating. I've been here for a year and I still get 'gobsmacked' every so often... But the expat live music scene here is composed of what I gather is less than 70 artists. They're a tight-knit community that have their own constantly-shifting friends, acquaintances and rivalries.
Adam, the main artist for this project, is one of those musicians who everyone knows and loves. He's an easy-going dude who's been in Saigon for a little while and has built up a reputation for being a good hang and incredibly talented. I met him shortly after another musician I got paired up with in a corporate gig mentioned his duo, Strung Out, singing his praises as an amazing musician.
When I saw Adam live in Mooney's for the first time, I was not disappointed. His guitar work is flawless and while he doesn't have a massive vocal range, he delivers his parts with precision, strength and commitment. His vocal harmonies are actually what I personally believe to be his secret weapon. It's something I've asked Tim, the cajon-player in my duo CA-DI-LAC to outright steal from them.
Now you know what I think of him as a musician, so when I saw that he wrote and released an entire album, I had to get on that.
Terminally Employed
The starting song, Attention, is the one that delivers that feeling of familiar faces in a pub. It might be because that's how I usually see Adam play all the time, but I feel that's how he naturally writes his songs. The happy mandolin in the very intro is a great way to set the tone for the entire listening session as it goes into a steady and positive groove.
The production in the whole album is very uncomplicated and raw, like a group of friends that got together and recorded live. I admire this style so much because it takes confidence in the song and in the performances to simply allow a song to have a couple of instruments going, instead of falling in the trap of needing to fill out the sonic space, which is a problem I've had myself when recording.
The vocals sit very nicely within the instrumental mix, backing vocals are not much quieter than the main voice, intensifying that pub-gig feeling. While I personally subscribe to the idea of lifting the vocals and having them sit above the mix of the instruments, I feel like for this album that sounds, it makes total sense.
A song that stands out to me personally is Dirty 30, I've heard Adam play this live with Calum and thought it a cute song, but in the studio version, it suddenly gets a swamp-rock-ish sound, think Creedence Clearwater Revival, with a steady bass and drums that are very hard not to bob your head to.
This album leaves me wanting more from this awesome roster of musicians. It inspires me to write and record more of my own music and I've already saved a bunch of songs in my own playlists, now it's your turn, give the band some love!
Terminally Employed | The Gobsmacked Ivory Salesmen
Stream the brand-new debut album on YouTube and Spotify. Support independent live music in Ho Chi Minh City.
The Lineup
Adam - Main Vocals, Acoustic Guitar
Steve Kitching - Electric Guitar and Backing Vocals
Luke Tiano - Bass, Backing Vocals
Calum Read - Mandolin, Banjo and Fiddle
Ronald Dalogdog - Drums
Produced by Khoa at MusicFriend studio (this is my favourite rehearsal spot in HCMC, by the way)
