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What do you get when a small-town country girl who grew up singing in the church choir flees to the city and joins a surf-punk band? You get the inspiring, idiosyncratic music of Adrienne Hamilton. Although her punk rock days are over, happily Adrienne hasn’t lost her edge: her unique sensibility and fierce independence-as a songwriter, as a musician, as a person-couples a DIY ethos with the musical chops to back it up.
Adrienne discovered the danger of song at the tender age of four, when her mother backed the family van into a tree while singing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” (in rounds). An untoward attraction to music was sparked in the girl right then and there, and it wasn’t long before she adopted the piano as her favored instrument, to accompany her voice. Over the next thirteen years, while a nurturing church organist helped to hone Adrienne’s piano-playing skills, secular songwriting quickly became her chief source of satisfaction. Adrienne found herself drawn to the strength of song, this medium in which it felt natural to do as she pleased: to forget or remember; to confront or ignore; to shout out loud or share seductively whispered secrets. Making music granted Adrienne the allowance to be honest, but honest on her own terms, and in her own good time. What’s both most astounding and yet, somehow, so very not, is that the audaciousness of music continues to captivate Adrienne even as she simultaneously, relentlessly tries to capture it.
Adrienne’s accomplished piano-driven compositions run the gamut from subdued, organic grooves to unapologetic upbeat cuts. Her sensuous, straightforward voice often accompanied by off-kilter arrangements makes her music uniquely original. It is those contrasts inherent in her music that make Adrienne Hamilton easy to appreciate and hard to ignore.