Adam Mac - Southern Spectacle
Bee Delores reviews Adam Mac's "extravagant and heartfelt" country pop masterpiece, Southern Spectacle.
Adam Mac always paints outside the lines. That's not more evident than it is with his brand new record, Southern Spectacle, a hypnotic, two-steppin' genre mixer. Out on October 24, the 12-track project is even more fearlessly unapologetic than he's ever been. He stands in the eye of the storm that is 2025 and squares up his pen to write some of the most brutally honest songs of his career. Naturally, he also includes many sweltering hoedowns to alleviate growing anxieties and bestow a sense of freedom and rebellion.
He rides the funk rainbow with such songs as "Rhinestoned" and "All Dollars, No Sense." Adam Mac's swagger is infectious. He electric slides from side to side, always leaning into the beat with a twinkle in his eyes. The sexy and slinky "Turpentine" thumps hard on the eardrums; the genre fusion is pretty hard to miss. He turns up the heat every chance he gets. "Stay up all night getting high on each other / Don’t close your eyes, we can hide under covers / Turn on the cowboy and turn off the lights," he promises over psychedelic guitars.
Earthy, string-bound moments like "Old Photograph" give him room to breathe and confess the darkest parts of his heart. "Stumbled across some pictures of you and your ex-boyfriend," he sings. "Old me would’ve destroyed 'em and then swore I didn’t know where they went." With its timeless melody, the mid-tempo serves as a reminder that time changes everything. It makes you wiser, more self-assured, and stronger to withstand the past's ghoulish shadow.
"Last Rodeo" emerges as Adam Mac's best song to date. "You got me back into the saddle / Like an old lariat, I unravel," he sings over the gently crying guitar and drums. "No need for reins upon this heart / It’s been yours from the start/ Now my only ring will be this band of gold." That yearning when you are so full of love in love bleeds from the song, and Adam delivers an evocative vocal centerpiece for the album.
With "The Outside," a duet with Chris Housman, Adam Mac encourages the listener that "it's better on the outside," even though "it ain't always sunny." The place where you're meant to be might be unexpected, a spot that never crossed your mind. "Well, the thing about being on the outside is one day you’re gonna see that the seat at the table that you wanted so bad ain’t where you were meant to be," the duo sings.
He bookends the record with another doozy. "Golden Boy," a powerful, thorny message to his parents, doesn't pull any punches. "Sometimes I see you in the mirror, though I haven’t seen you in years," he admits over silver-laced strings. "Would you recognize the man I love? / Or is it something you still fear?" That anguish and terror are etched into his every syllable, as he exorcises those demons and looks them dead in the eye. By the end, he absolves himself from feeling any kind of guilt or self-hatred.
Adam Mac's Southern Spectacle walks right down the dividing line between extravagant showmanship and heartfelt stingers. His melting pot allows both in equal doses, and his flourishing musical identity has never been so clear and well-defined. If there's one queer record that needs to make every year-end list, it's this one.
