PLAYING GAMES WITH THE SHADOW, the latest in a prolific stream of output from Kevin Max, may very well be his most brilliant work yet. The fact that Max describes the new project as his first real album due to an intentional exclusion of outside influence in the songwriting process has me rubbing my hands together in anxious anticipation of what could yet be if he continues on this path.
Last year’s BROKEN TEMPLES was a fantastic album and THE IMPOSTER is a long-time standard, but, on PLAYING GAMES WITH THE SHADOW Max freed himself to explore the musical and lyrical dynamics that exist between dessert valleys, Sunset strips, midnight shadows, and pre-dawn hope in a manner both deeper and more transparent than he’s written in on prior albums. “The Skin Of Our Teeth,” “Election,” and “Girl With The Tiger Eyes” stand as testaments to the fact that the thick skin Max has carried over the years as a member of dcTalk and Audio Adrenaline has been pulled back.
The lyrical victory on PLAYING GAMES WITH THE SHADOW, though, is clearly rivaled by the stellar roster of players and studio hands that Max arranged to work on the album from John Mark Painter (Fleming & John; Steve Taylor & The Perfect Foil) and Dwayne Larring (Audio Adrenaline; Sonic Flood) to Steve Hindalong (The Choir) and others, musical alchemy runs rabid on songs such as “Muzick is Magic!,” “Phantoms of Terra,“”Panic Button,” and “William Blake.”
Stylistically, the album is a measured, yet, raucous potpourri of sound. PLAYING GAMES WITH THE SHADOW is the embodiment of new wave, punk, and industrial accents masterfully woven together into a flourescent musical tapestry born out of the mind of Kevin Max.
Consider this written account of the impression that PLAYING GAMES WITH THE SHADOW has made on me a raised-glass toast to the prospect that there’s a lot more where that came from.
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