Last week, multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter Zane MacFarlane released his first full length album, adjust, on SoundCloud. The thirteen track album adds to a wealth of singles uploaded to MacFarlane’s SoundCloud account over the past four years. 

With the exception of “Back Down” and “We’ve Got Trouble,” which were beautifully recorded, mixed, and mastered by David Furlong at The Music Room in Rhode Island, all songs on adjust were recorded by MacFarlane, using a Yeti USB microphone and GarageBand in various locations across the country. The results are stunning. Devoid of the smoke and mirrors of overproduction, adjust is a refreshingly pure album that allows MacFarlane’s raw talent to shine through.

MacFarlane’s stripped down production method affords the album a charming familiarity. The experience of listening to adjust feels like intimately gathering with close friends in a living room or under the shade of a tree on a Sunday afternoon. We are invited into MacFarlane’s world, as we imagine him taking a sip of coffee in the introduction to “Open Me Up” and hear his phone ringing at the end of “Let Me Go.”

This feeling of familiarity also carries into MacFarlane’s lyricism. In the track featured below, “I Wanna Know You,” there is something endearing about the innocence of the lyrics, which come across more like a stream of daily thoughts. For example, “When you make your tea for the afternoon, do you ever think of me and how I like it plain as you add your milk?” is one of my favorite lines for the way it evokes real emotion through something as ordinary and mundane as making tea.

Complemented by the lull of a violin, “I Wanna Know You” is a fitting testament to MacFarlane’s ability to capture human experience through song.

To listen to the rest of adjust, click HERE.

Featured Photo Courtesy of Zane MacFarlane