Low Cut Connie’s last studio record, 2020’s Private Lives, came out in the thick of the COVID shut-down when bands across the globe were forced off the road. As a result, that double LP brimming with some of frontman Adam Weiner’s most compelling work, never really got the proper roll out it deserved. If there is any justice in the music world his latest, Art Dealers, will finally see Low Cut Connie get the mass exposure he so rightly deserves.
While influences from Bruce Springsteen and Big Star could be heard weaved throughout Private Lives, Art Dealers is a much more 70’s New York-centric record, nodding to Patti Smith and Lou Reed. Weiner, now based in Philly, spent years playing piano in gay bars across New York and he draws on that time in the city for inspiration here. As a result, Art Dealers is a perfect mix of charm, love and devotion with just enough sleaze and grit to keep it interesting.
Despite being a love letter to Smith and Reed, it’s also a record very much anchored to the present lyrically, with the songs addressing current problems like the rise of hate crime against Jews in the U.S. as well as the current flirtation with neo-fascism across the globe. The album opens with the solid “Tell Me Something I Don’t Know,” but it’s the next two songs that quickly grab your attention, the funk rock hybrid “Sleaze Me On,” and the addictively catchy “Big Boy.” Elsewhere on “Whips and Chains,” he turns up the distorted guitars and garage rock influences and writes some of his most brilliantly pointed political lyrics yet, while on the four-minute “King of the Jews” he deftly takes on the rise of antisemitism brilliantly and emotionally on the piano slow-burn track. The title song is also another powerful three-and-a-half-minute punch to the gut. The stripped down “Party’s Over,” is the perfect track to close the record.
Across half a dozen albums now, Weiner has proven himself to be more than just a stellar songwriter but also one of the most entertaining live acts currently wheeling a piano across the country. And Art Dealers may just be his best album yet.
