Freak Scene #73: Singles From Seth Adam and the Problem With Kids Today
Plus, the new Lichter & Levin Delicatessen has music connections
A Guide to Music in Western Mass. (and sometimes Connecticut)
This week in Freak Scene, we hear new singles from New Haven-area musicians Seth Adam and the Problem With Kids Today, and we rejoice in the opening next week of Lichter & Levin Delicatessen, which has rock ’n’ roll connections.
New Haven singer and songwriter Seth Adam is one of those people I knew from Twitter back before social media, and that website in particular, became an irredeemable cesspool. I must have been at the Hartford Courant, and we’d occasionally interact online about music, probably without me fully realizing that he was a musician — a sign that he wasn’t pushy about trying to gin up coverage. He’d have been justified if he had, though, given his new single “Things Won’t Always Be This Way.”
It’s a rootsy stunner of a track, with a narrator who’s watching the years slip away and realizing, for good and ill, just how true the song title is. Adam accompanies himself on acoustic guitar, picking out a part that evokes a thundercloud on the edge of a sunny day while he delivers the vocals in a serene tenor. He also played electric guitar, bass, percussion and keyboards, and sang harmony vocals, while Stephen Rodgers (who formerly owned the Space and its associated venues in Hamden, and played with his brother in Mighty Purple before that) adds pedal steel guitar.
“Things Won’t Always Be This Way” is Adam’s first single since last year’s “We’re Only,” which followed his 2023 track “So Nice to See You.” His most recent album, Fits and Stops and Starts, came out in 2022.
The Problem With Kids Today? ‘I Dunno’
Confession: It’s hard to resist the endless possibilities for jokes based on the name of New Haven-area band the Problem With Kids Today, but they probably get that all the time, so why pile on? More relevant is the fact that the trio churns out hooky garage-punk songs that sound as if they could have come out at any point in the past 50 years as part of one punk scene or another. It’s a style that has become pretty much timeless.
As it happens, the group started releasing music in 2021, with a couple of singles and a pair of albums. Guitarist Tate Brooks, bassist Silas Lourenco-Lang and drummer Reena Yu tease their forthcoming third LP with “I Dunno,” a lean rocker that surges along on a current of fuzzed-over guitars, rattling drums and a busy bassline that darts here and there at the bottom of the track. The accompanying video shows the musicians playing the track, interspersed with shots of them clowning around. Ladies and gentleman, this is the Problem With Kids Today. Their new album Take It! is due Aug. 22.
Upcoming Concerts
This year’s Springfield Jazz & Roots Festival happens July 10-12, presented by the community-based non-profit Blues to Green. The festival starts Thursday, July 10, at HOPE Center for the Arts with Gaby Moreno with Mercedes Escobar. The lineup also includes Endea Owens & The Cookout, the Puerto Rican bomba-fusion band El Laberinto del Coco, Springfield's Richard Parris Scott Band, latter-day bebop act the Sarah Hanahan Quartet, the Suadela Love Experience (featuring Western Mass. native Christina Colón), Merging Roots, Journey to Funkstar, the Black Legacy Project, Springfield MC Fabeyon and the Jo Sallins Experience. Performances happen at HOPE Center for the Arts and in Stearns Square in Tower Square Park on Main Street. The festival is free, but donations are encouraged.
The Race Street Salsa Festival happens July 18-19 at De La Luz in Holyoke, with Orquesta El Macabeo, Las Karamba, Sharina y Su Conjunto Guajiba, Tony Silva, a performance for kids featuring Mister G with Marcos Carreras, and Miguel Periche, along with face painting, a mezcal tasting, salsa dance lessons and more. Free with RSVP (Day 1 and Day 2).
That’s it for this week, but Freak Scene is always seeking submissions. You can send music for coverage consideration to erdanton at gmail or reply to this email. Check out these guidelines first.
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