Sam Weber - Everything Comes True (Album Review)
Sometimes you have to cross borders to get your particular fix of Americana and, of late, it’s over in Canada where I’ve been getting a much needed hit of pedal steel-laden loveliness. It is a high that comes in the form of one Sam Weber, who caught my attention late in 2019 with the superb single ‘Blackout’ (see the Maple Leaf roundup #11) and whose latest album gets a UK release this week.
The dry vocal and solo piano intro of ‘Everything Comes True’ opens the record (I’m thinking: is Mark Everett fronting The Band?) and in under a minute we’ve been taken from childhood through adolescence into adulthood; fitting for a song about life’s trials and their tendency to always be ready for you, even if you’re not ready for them. By verse two the players have all ambled in and we’re being carried along on a bed of textbook Hammond and gloriously crumbly guitars. Weber’s vocal delivery, which has the pure intimacy of Kevin Montgomery mingling with the world-weariness of Drew Holcomb, remains foregrounded as he delivers cynicism and hope in (almost) equal measure. There are rich pickings for quotable lines but try this for starters: “Pessimism, aneurysm, overwhelming guilt/God imposes sanctions on the people he won’t kill”.
Refreshingly, Weber changes tack with the upbeat shuffling bounce of ‘It’s All Happening’ - which has Paul Simon written all over it - before those old-school ivories are back for ‘Obligated’, a song that wryly catalogues the Sisyphean nature of faith. The fragility of Weber’s vocal here is cushioned by some deft vocal harmonies and a brass section so warm I needed to lose a layer. The chunking mandolin and gospel BVs of ‘Queen On The Money’ is another unforced study in the vintage American sound; a testament to Tyler Chester’s beautiful, even-handed production and the impeccable musicianship coming from every corner of the room. Whatever those folks got paid, it was worth double.
Weber’s voice is joined by Madison Cunningham’s on the rather more delicate ‘Avenir’ before an equally atmospheric cover of Kate McGarrigle’s ‘Mendocino’. It’s an unusually ethereal middle to the record but it serves as a good break before the straighter rock thump of ‘Probably Not’ which has a dash of Roy Orbison to it - always alright by me - and the inevitable wistfulness of ‘Promise of The Road’. The aforementioned ‘Blackout’ follows and will be, for some, just too darn cuhn-tre. Nevertheless it shares a warmth and tenderness with the rest of the record that is so endearing that I had no choice but to let it slide and contemplate, if only for a moment, how I might look in a pair of cowboy boots.
The moody Van Morrisonisms of ‘No’ close the record and represent more of a stylistic mixed bag, neatly summing up a record that pushes the boundaries of Americana in a most welcome way. This is Sam Weber’s third LP and to paraphrase from ‘Blackout’ he may well now have cut the record that he always wanted to. I suspect, however, he will remain a road-bound and restless soul but Everything Comes True is undeniably his most artistically mature and sonically refined work to date. For each and every heavy user of the Americana drug, there are several layers of satisfaction herein. I, for one, am in real danger of becoming addicted.
Everything Comes True is available now via Sonic Unyon Records (SUN179)
Review by Rich Barnard.
A new name to me, but based on the new EP, ‘Tigers in Your Backyard (Nocturnal Edition)’, Molly Murphy is one to watch. Initially, Molly embarked on a promising college career as a double Film and English Major pursuing a career in screenwriting but left all that behind to form a band (as you do). Murphy’s latest release finds the singer-songwriter adding a modern sheen to her traditional Celtic roots.