Album Review: Adeem the Artist, Cast-Iron Pansexual

In the pantheon of queer country music, there are few records more foundational than Lavender Country’s classic 1972 self-titled. Funny and sad and nasty and tender, Patrick Haggerty’s total candour blew the barn doors wide open, allowing for generations of LGBTQ2S+ people to find themselves in country music’s endless hilarity and hurt. 

And while Haggerty’s influence can be felt across today’s crop of queer country artists, some, like seventh-generation Carolinian Adeem the Artist, carry his torch more obviously. Adeem describes themselves as a blue-collar Artist, and a pro-people, anti-capitalist fervour beats in the heart of Cast-Iron Pansexual. The music reflects this intimate humanity too, as Adeem spins small stories of enormous queer lives over percussion-less bluegrass and country. From the quiet longing of “Apartment” or light-hearted coming-of-age opener “I Never Came Out,” Adeem finds gentle humour and yearning in stories so often defined by hurt and fear. 

Cast-Iron Pansexual is music for all people, the kind of record that is painstakingly careful to leave the door open to any who may hear themselves in it. In music that recognizes both the weight and joy of queer life, Adeem the Artist continues the mission of those who came before them ⎯ painting country’s canonical sounds with brand new colour.  

Cast-Iron Pansexual was released March 5, 2021.
Listen to it here.