I’m a little sad to say that Sam Fender’s previous two albums passed me by. I didn’t even listen closely enough. Just thought he was a kid for the kids and not this far older music fan.
Oh, how wrong, wrong, wrong, was I.
It turns out that he’s one of the most powerful political voices in pop music and can marry stadium sized choruses with social realism about life and community in North Shields perfectly.
Sam Fender is our very own Bruce Springsteen.
People Watching, his third album was the catalyst for this revelation. I listened to it once, then again, then again. Then I even bought it on vinyl (blue yolk record store day release), my seal of quality reserved only for the best.
Every song is marvellous but there are one or two special standout moments, at the start and the end.
Let’s take the latter first and the closer Remember My Name, about his late grandparents. It takes in themes of growing old and about how older people want to be remembered. It also focuses on memory itself, as his grandfather cared for his grandmother, who had dementia.
Through all that lyrical emotion and with a great chorus, he then adds to it the Easington Colliery brass band. This track may be as close as a song can come to perfection.
Another standout on this album, which has been co-produced between Sam Fender and War on Drugs’ Adam Granduciel, to mention is the album’s title track. This is another highly personal song, written as a tribute to his friend Annie Orwin, on his way to and from visiting her while she received palliative care. It takes in big issues too around the failures of healthcare in the UK.
The rest of the tracks, well, they are for you to find out more about and listen to. All rich in their combining of highly personal themes with the bigger picture of life we can all associate with.
by Joe Lepper
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