Adrianne Archie – HSMS: Heart, Soul, Mind & Strength

Adrianne Archie
HSMS: Heart, Soul, Mind & Strength
Independent Release 2009
www.cdbaby.com

Released at the end of September, Adrianne Archie’s HSMS: Heart, Soul, Mind & Strength is an eclectic and tech-savvy “rhythm & praise” collection. The seventeen tracks are atmospheric flights of pop/soul set to an R&B beat. Adrianne’s intimate neo-soul vocals are evocative of Lauryn Hill.

HSMS is the third release for the Louisville-based singer-songwriter, whose debut CD, HTHAELHH (He That Hath an Ear, Let Him Hear), earned her Best New Artist and Best Female Artist hardware from the Urban Gospel Alliance. Similarly, HSMS is geared toward the younger praiser but especially for youth requiring redemption. For example, pumping dance beats rage through songs such as the opening “Nothing for Something” (featuring a rap by Nemo), “All I Need is Love” and “Slow Down.”

Adrianne wrote the songs, though more appropriate descriptors for her compositions are sonic vignettes about daily encounters with faith, hope, praise, inspiration, saving souls, getting saved and overcoming life’s innumerable challenges. Some tracks are more potent than others. Highlights are the unhurried and mesmerizing “Strong,” “Extra Credit” (“you’re gonna get it, you get the credit”) and the melodic “So I Know,” the latter which opens with a dramatic staccato violin. The listener gets the impression that Adrianne knows about the troubles whereof she speaks, and has survived them to tell it.

The final track, “Go Pop,” stresses the importance of using today’s sounds to reach the unreachable. One line provides something of a motto for the project: “You gotta be relevant conduit/this message that we send/so it is evidence that this record’s meant to draw you into this, calm you into it.”

But Adrianne herself sums up HSMS far better than I can: it’s music for “the car, crib, club, cardio and church.”

Three of Five Stars

gPod picks: “Strong,” “Extra Credit,” “So I Know.”