In his debut album, “Midwest,” Adam James Sorensen has gives us many spaces into which we can join him in living into his songs. As a collection, “Midwest” is introspective and edgy in a welcoming way. It is full of places to feel and think to the accompaniment of the artist’s musical style, which is at once both fresh and nostalgic. The music and lyrics called me back for one listening session after another – an experience I have only with music that goes past the point of entertaining me. When I first heard the lyric, “My savior lit the way with neon lights,” I smiled, choked back a tear, and I saw myself among the legions of people who have been seduced by the all the things that seduce us. The songs that comprise “Midwest” are not the kind to be played on the jukebox in a loud honky-tonk, or in the company of your drinking buddies. They are better savored in the company of a warm fireplace in the dark of night, where they can seep into you – into your mind, into your heart, and into your soul. I feel quite sure that those were the personal places Sorensen drew on as he wrote his songs, and as he laid them down in the studio to share with us. Some of the spaces that “Midwest” shares are as wide as the mouth of a canyon, easily accessed and open to us without posing any danger. My favorites, though, are the ones I had to squeeze into, with caution and care, trying to connect to the pain, nostalgia and truth about us all that’s not quite so comfortable. I doubt that many could listen to “People Start Fires” and not see their selves in there somewhere. Ah, vanity, the most destructive of our faults. It’s laid out before us, if we squeeze through the opening he presents. I believe it was Greil Marcus who once said, “The measure of an artist’s genius is in how he creates the spaces into which we all can live”. How long does it take all of us to know, not as hollow words, but as a way of understanding, that “Sometimes you don’t have to try?” “Northside”, the song from which these lyrics come, touched me like those written by songwriters such as Warren Zevon and Townes Van Zandt, who’s songs put me right in that same space. The workmanship of a singer/songwriter, when done well, is identified by a perfect marriage of their unique lyricism, and musical interpretation. Sorensen’s nylon string guitar provides the steady, sonic backdrop for the songs on “Midwest”. The use of lush strings, mandolin, dobro, piano, guitars, soft brushes and the deep tones of the pedal steel dance together within the context of a style that would allow me to recognize a new song as an Adam James Sorensen song. In his debut record, “Midwest”, he gives us a collection of originals in which he reveals his honest, subtle and incisive view of things – little things, big things – personal and shared. I cannot wait to share this music with people I love. - Bob Hill