Though Adam Dunetz has been writing songs for 30 years, running a restaurant in Northampton until the pandemic struck didn’t leave him with a lot of time for music. Yet he found enough spare moments to make “Moving Parts,” Dunetz’s sixth album and his first since “The Backup Plan” in 2015.
While the earlier album was, by Dunetz’s description, “a very nostalgic work,” “Moving Parts” is rooted in the here and now, with personal reflections on his place in a changing world. Sonically, it’s a folky album, with 10 songs built around acoustic guitars and adorned with piano and organ, pedal steel guitar and the occasional accordion or trumpet part. Dunetz sings in a welcoming baritone, his voice warm and a little rumpled as he addresses a shooting star who never comes down on the brisk, lilting “Fighter Jet,” or takes stock of gratitude on “Some Regrets” as steel guitar and piano cascade around his vocals.
Dunetz is a subtly evocative lyricist, and he’s skilled at conjuring a familiar scenario — the quixotic quest on opening track “White Whale,” for example, or rolling with unforeseen events on “Didn’t See It Coming” — and then reframing the context in a way that steers away from the cliché. “You’ve been lost at sea since the day you first set sail,” he sings on a chorus of “White Whale,” a circumstance that would make the quest much harder to define.
Along with his voice and guitar, Dunetz is joined by a cast of local heavy hitters, including his core band — Anand Nayak, Paul Kochanski and Jason Smith — and singer-songwriter Seth Glier, Philip B. Price and Flora Reed of Winterpills, and Northampton-turned-Austin singer Miranda Brown. It’s a more than solid crew on a more than solid record that feels almost like a rebirth. With Dunetz’s Main Street café, the beloved Green Bean, now closed for good, here’s hoping he’ll keep the momentum going with the next album sooner, rather than later.