Adam Kowalski and I are taking a leisurely walk through a forest in what seems to be the middle of nowhere, as the artist loosely hums the refrain melody from Nirvana's hit, 'Smells Like Teen Spirit'. We weave through the path, while he stares blankly into space, detached from the living world around him. He suddenly points leftward;
"Let's go that way," he says.
The man continues humming, albeit to a completely different rhythm - as if he'd just switched channels. 26, Polish-born in 1988, Adam now calls London his home, and has returned to the path he used to walk as a youth.
I ask for any inside info related to anything he's working on, and he pulls out his phone, and plays a sound all too familiar, yet unique in its own way. Distorted electric guitars, a slow tempo, and that raw sound that almost made the grunge genre its own art form. His band, 'Growing Pains' is going strong for their upcoming third album.
As the music plays, we come to a grinding halt before the small excavation site ahead. A large digger takes its time, backing up across our road forward.
"A lot of construction work goes on here, nowadays," he tells me to pass the time.
I cunningly remind him of the 'reconstruction' that he's been working between himself and weed. His face lights up briefly with a smile, before returning to its default, preoccupied state.
"Yeah, drugs are bad," he mentions jokingly, "After our first album succeeded, we - I kind of fell off." It was as if he were confessing this for the first time. It's no secret, however, that the band entered the mainstream in a bang, before fading back into obscurity in 2010. When the lead singer of a band goes out on drugs, it's bad news for those left behind. And the weed was only the beginning. Adam had entered a world of drugs he'd never seen before, and fell off the radar for what felt like a long time.
"We attempted a comeback in... late 2012, to early '13..." he didn't finish that particular sentence - but he didn't need to. It is known that Growing Pains released a second album in January 2013 that didn't show up on the radar in the first place.
"Ghosts," he mumbled, "We were unheard from again. And people wrote us off as a one-hit-wonder, but things go way deeper than that."
"There was a lot going on back then that doesn't reach the surface, really. People say I let the fame get to my head, but there was a whirlwind of trouble that threw me off the spot light. Trust was lost, relationships ceased. Those were bleak times."
It's clear that at this point, he feels the world is sleeping on him.
It also seems that the band has been working very, very hard on this next release.
To ease the mood, I chime in to remind him of the times when the people referred to Growing Pains as the second coming of Nirvana.
"Forget that," Adam shrugs, "We don't want to be known as the second anything. We want to be number one, we want to be better than Nirvana."
The excavator finally began to haul itself out of our sight, and as we marched on, Adam continued;
"...And I want to live past the age of 27."
We both laughed heartily as we looked forward, to a time when hopefully Adam and his band release a great album that will return alternative rock to the mainstream.
Fingers crossed.
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