Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Luck or preparation, what can seem like two separate entities, can be at times the same feeling but looked upon from different views in a hall of mirrors as one and the same, they can melt and bleed into one another and be seen as fortune made good. The reverse can also be true, that practise skipped and dedication to the cause missed is the mother in the mirror of the universal Bad Luck, the ill fortune and the struggle for acceptance in the eyes of the peers and the bold, is regarded as the meeting of the mistimed and out of step.

It is with fortune, boldness of perpetual spirit and wonderful timing that Oxfordshire’s Adam Barnes lead single from his forthcoming new album, the unhindered and emotionally evocative Bad Luck is one filled with reward for the listener and the groove of experienced and the confidential opening up about a soul’s dark secret, the faith we place sometimes to highly in our own ideal and yet the undernourishment of one’s ability to see the project at hand as another stepping stone on life’s heavy set shoulders.

By releasing the sense of argument that comes with the thought of ill fortune and the divine intervention we all should strive to do, Adam Barnes reiterates the sense of letting such notions go, that life is not bad luck, sometimes contrived, sometimes the finding of a wasp inside your newly opened glass jar of strawberry jam, but none the less just a string of events that stops with you; how you react to that moment is up to you but it should never end with the two little words, “Why Me?”

A beautifully arranged single, a heartening return for the Oxfordshire musician after a period away from the studio, Bad Luck is the positive outcome of grace and ability knowing that it cannot be denied forever.

Ian D. Hall