Killed

Adam Newman brings an anxious, high-wire energy to the microphone, selling jokes about minor absurdities like his life depends on them. On his second album, he spins standard observational premises into animated rants. He attacks topics like the dark implications of the Jetsons universe and the reality of a closed Fenway Park, proving he knows how to keep a crowd engaged. It is the sound of a Brooklyn alt-comic operating smoothly inside a traditional comedy club, armed with self-deprecation and a total lack of pretension.

Recorded over a November 2014 weekend at Acme Comedy Co. in Minneapolis, “Killed” dropped as an audio-only hour the following January. Newman was right in the middle of his initial mainstream push, logging sets on David Letterman and securing his own Comedy Central half-hour. Around this era, he went viral for pulling a bag of cocaine out of a heckler’s coat, proving he could manage unpredictable crowds. This album captures that exact level of road-tested competence, documented through an eclectic track list that includes “Specifically for Horses,” “No Big Whoop,” and “Talking into a Muppet’s Dick.”