David Mead

Ever wonder what Anton Barbeau might’ve sounded like if he’d gotten a big label deal and the best possible producer who really understood his music and then the planets lined up in such a way that faerie dust was sprinkled everywhere and all within earshot were hopelessly, gloriously smitten? Check out the title cut of this David Mead album, which was produced by Adam Schlesinger (Fountains of Wayne, Ivy, songwriter for That Thing You Do and Josie & the Pussycats). If you’re a drooling pop-music fiend of the smart variety, listen up. You want this. Mead, a Long Island native who sounds like early Paul McCartney solo (pre-nursery rhyme) crossed with James Taylor and maybe XTC’s Andy Partridge, which is to say, like Schlesinger’s FoW bandmate Chris Collingsworth gone postmodern textural, is it the smoke or are the windshield wipers and the raindrops really keeping time with the music? Capisce?