I don't use the word "amazing" that often when describing records released by local bands, however Southeast Engine's latest effort is just that. Lead singer Adam Remnant has been blessed with a stunningly textured voice brimming with emotional depth that few singers anywhere are lucky to posess. Adam's vocal abilities put him on my top 3 list of favorite regional male singers next to ex-Parker Ben Parker frontman Joe Spurling, and current Last Hotel lead singer Ryan Horns. It's good company to be in.

Southeast Engine's "A Mystery Of Sorts" Artwork by Joseph Remnant

The CD, entitled "(Love is a Murder) A Mystery Of Sorts" was released to a packed audience at The Union Friday, March 14th. The Red Tails opened up the show. By the time Southeast Engine got to the stage, some of the band was pretty sloshed (hey, they worked hard, they deserved it) yet they still managed to perform an energetic show. Perhaps the alcohol helped. I navigated through the crowd to the stage so that I could snap a few pictures for the AMN. After I a few shots, I got a tap on my back.

"Hey, could you send me a copy of that picture", said a girl at the show who was looking over my shoulder while I worked.

Just then, I looked around and noticed that nearly everyone in the front three rows were women. It would seem that not only does Adam have a star-quality voice, but a star-quality mug as well.

Singer, Guitarist, Harmonica player, Adam Remnant

Back to the music. Southeast Engine plays an soft-yet-edged form of alt-country and indie roots rock that reminds me of bands like Spoon from Austin, and everyone's favorite major-label rejects, Wilco. There is also no denying a definite similarity to folk great Bob Dylan or perhaps to a lesser extent, the work of his offspring, Jacob Dylan and the Wallflowers.

The songs vary from easy going accoustic ballads, to distorted vocal leads over dirty blues-rock, to spacey, brittle, downright depressing tunes. However Southeast engine never fully loses the southern twang no matter what direction any of their songs may take. It's part of their sound down to its roots.

Southeast Engine Before We Kill You Day By Day Open For Suggestions For More Soundclips Of Bands, Click Here

The first track on the disk, "Day By Day" swells up from nowhere. Extremely spooky, backward looped keyboard ramblings just about scare the crap out of you. Then, you hear audio samples of Lynn Redgrave talking about her Father and Shakespeare as the music plays. The clips came from an NPR interview and were used by permission. Cool.

Conrad Dillon on Guitar. He also mixed, mastered and produced their CD

While most of the CD was mellow and rootsy, there were a few hoofin' tunes. "Open For Suggestions" is just such a tune and is also the reason why I think Southeast Engine reminds me of the affore mentioned band, Spoon.

I find it amazing that according to the liner-notes, this disc was recorded at a home studio. Local bands and sound engineers should find out whatever recording engineer Conrad Dillon did to make Southeast Engine's CD sound so warm and professional. All the songs have a pleasant low-fi element to them. I use the qualifier "pleasant" because some lo-fi recordings are actually lo-effort recordings and as such, can be anoyingly grating on the ears. It takes only a brief listen to determine that a large amount of care was taken to record this CD. The sound of the drum kit on "One Caught Fire" for example, sounds as if though it was recorded on one microphone. Yet the vocals are multi-layered and more polished studio trickery was employed on some other of the tracks, like a gord scrape that pans from left to right during the song. The resulting sound is the audio equivalent of wearing a suit jacket with torn jeans. Classy, but not too classy.

If you are looking for a well balanced, mellow CD to listen to while sitting on the porch this summer, "A Mystery of Sorts" by Southeast Engine is it. Four stars out of five.