So it’s been another lengthy radio silence from me due to two reasons:
– my summer vacation, which I dedicated to some quite long e-bike treks with my wife. Didn’t really listen to music during those weeks, other than from the bluetooth speakers hanging from the handlebars of my bike; that was just road music too, not to be reviewed or written about
– right after the e-bike weeks, my nemesis, the tinnitus that comes and goes periodically, did come back and prevented any enjoyment of music for at least a month. But that’s gone, for now, so here we go…
Sam Carter’s Home Waters was one of my favorite folk albums of 2020 and remains a favorite, with songs like Fly the Flag and especially Hold Back the Storm, that one really connected with something deep in me.
So now, while waiting for Sam’s upcoming album, I did a flashback to his first two full length albums: Keepsakes and The No Testament . It had been a while and my recollections of those records were hazy at best, so it was like listening to something new, actually. And as it turned out, those earlier efforts are just as good as his more recent ones.
Keepsakes is already 15 years old and features mostly Sam and his guitar and little else. The paired down approach really brings the songs themselves to the fore, with his excellent guitar playing and of course his brilliant lyrics.
I really appreciate him as a lyricist because he has his own voice, his own style. There’s a wee bit of Harry Chapin there, in how he tells stories, but he doesn’t go into that full short stories mode; he’s more of a poet who says more with less words and he’s also more incisive and sometimes ironic than Chapin ever was.
My favorites on Keepsakes are Pheasant, a bittersweet and also very funny tail of unrequited love, and Oh Dear, Rue the Day, which is a pretty tragic but also darkly comic picture of a very unhealthy and very unfair relationship.
Then a short song called Fight whose main point remains to me a little bit fuzzy; I’m not quite sure what it’s saying but I think I know what it’s saying and if I’m correct in my assumption I very much can identify with it but because I’m not sure I won’t analyze it here at all.
Also, the closing song, Spill Those Secrets, I find completely charming, it’s a fitting and somewhat cathartic ending to an album whose stories are mostly not of the happier kind.
The No Testament too is already a teenager, 12 years old at this time. It was a slight change in approach in that it features a band. Again, you have some stories of not so successful relationships, and I wonder how many of these are his own experiences or is he doing a Randy Newman thing where he creates characters and presents their stories in first person narrative. Doesn’t really matter, though, because the songs are excellent. And the band fits in very well and gives a little bit more color to the tune and the stories.
The songs on The No Testament come with lyrics that are sometimes so insightful and incisive and poignant that I just go whew… After the short surprise choral intro, you have Dreams Are Made of Money, which is almost like a response to both Randy Newman (It’s Money That Matters) and Eurythmics (Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This). Sam’s take on money and dreams is different than Randy’s or Eurythmics; more down to earth. I absolutely love this tune and don’t know whether to laugh or just nod my head in agreement like “yeah, you’re right Sam, it’s not great, but that’s how life in this capitalist world is.”
What I especially appreciate on this album are two songs that come one after another. A song called The One is concise and very touching but not treacly depiction of a man’s life after what seems to be a very painful separation or divorce. There’s no self-pity, no “crying in my beer”, it’s just very adult and very honest.
It’s followed by Separate Ways – not the Journey song… It’s about something that I don’t remember hearing in a song before: it’s about a divorce told from the perspective of a friend of the couple breaking up; somebody who knows these people and observes it from the outside. The song only has a couple of verses and really not too many lines in the entire song, but it’s so humane and so to the point and captures perfectly the emotions of somebody who does not want to take sides in this painful situation. I absolutely love it, I wish I could write lyrics like this.
The other two songs that really got me on The No Testament are No Other Side, about how futile it is to try and control and plan your life, and Ruins by the Shore, a bleak but not depressive glimpse of what will eventually come of the loftiest ambition and the mightiest dreams that we have and what finally becomes of the greatest of empires – the title pretty much gives it away. It’s a beautiful song and the way Sam delivers is just wow.
So, if you liked Home Waters and other stuff Sam has done over the past decade but you haven’t checked out this earlier stuff, please do so because it’s just excellent and he’s been brilliant from the beginning. The new album, Silver Horizon, will be out soon and I’m really looking forward to it because I’m sure he will not disappoint.
Sam’s Bandcamp site:
FolkNotes 