Not Done.

I spoke too soon about Sam Amidon: Monsieur Sam’s label finally got back to me after all, & w/a top-secret download code for the whole album. So I got it now. As anticipated, I See the Sign is an interesting collection of sort of re-imagined archaic-American music pieces. Folk songs. But not really.

Most of the songs on the album are credited as traditional, public domain, albeit “recomposed” by our Mr. A. Except, notably, for the R. Kelly cover (“Relief”), which believe it or not meshes pretty seamlessly with the extemporized ballads, hymns, shanties, & (I think) jump-rope rhymes here.

Sam’s arrangements are satisfyingly spare; he leaves a comfortable amount of breathing room around & w/in the songs. At the same time, his instrumentation draws from a fairly broad palette, adding narrative emphasis to the sung stories, & adding harmonic richness to the sometimes-skeletal melodies. There are some almost-lush string & woodwind textures here & there, surprisingly evocative of Aaron Copland, of all things. I didn’t expect that! Here’s why I think that’s interesting: Mr. A is actually straddling a couple of very different artistic traditions here.

On the one hand, he positions himself as a Folk practitioner. Which, to my understanding, makes him an inheritor of (mostly) oral traditions, a performer of songs handed down w/out clear provenance of authorship, & whose structure is collective, fluid, fairly open to interpretation.

On the other hand, “serious” (i.e., academically-trained) composers have their own longstanding “tradition” of helping themselves to the local, rustic musical dialect, extrapolating freely from it, & creating “high” Art.

Sam Amidon seems to me to engage in both of these realms, maybe w/out fully inhabiting either of them. So, is he the country mouse or the town mouse? The lack of an easy or comfortable answer to that question is, itself, reason to find this artist interesting.

Sam (I) Am.

So, here's this guy Sam Amidon. He does like a Folk Revival kind of thing that wouldn’t necessarily find its way onto my radar. You know: banjo, Irish fiddle, “traditional” music re-iterated, that sort of deal.

Anyhoo, this here Mr. SamAm has got a new album coming out in March, & I’m quite intrigued about it, solely on the basis of this one song that’s circulating now, called “How Come That Blood.”

Hear:

We’ve got a syncopated rhythmic foundation here, sort of gently percussive, but also sort of droning. What sounds, at first, a bit loopish to me is probably just quick arpeggios on (I‘m guessing) a mandolin? & then shortly there’s violin, though pretty clearly not in any real sort of “fiddle” mode. & then as things progress we get some rumbly bass synthesizering, right? Overall, it gives off a sort of electronica vibe that, on closer listen, isn’t actually there after all. Suffice to say that, musically, it’s a bastard stepchild, pretty far afield of any Folk paradigm of which I’m aware.

All of which just does a great job of (a) catching my interest, and (b) reeling me in. & then I’m all defenseless against the truly dark & creepy lyric re: some kind of brutal fratricide, made all the more chilling via its deadpan delivery. Is it just me, or is this some haunting shit?

& plus, I had no idea if this was, given Samamidon’s pedigree, an actual “Traditional” song (which I sort of doubted, right?), or just made up to sound like one. Shows what I know. Turns out this song has been making people’s skin crawl for, like, a hundred years.

Anyway, I won’t further embarrass myself trying to actually identify the (to my ears) countrified vernacular in use here. But we are clearly in an unfamiliar territory, linguistically speaking, right out of the gate. The lyric is as ostentatiously archaic as the music is self-consciously contemporary. Which makes for just the sort of cognitive dissonance sure to make my pulse race every damn time.

Meanwhile, the singsong, repetitive structure might be reassuring, soothing even, in another context less preoccupied with, um, blood. It only takes a minute & ½ of obfuscation before our narrator owns up: “It is the blood of my / Own dear brother / Whom lately / I have slain.” I get some chills there, I don’t mind telling.

Anyway, that’s the one song we can hear for now. I did try to obtain an early listen to some more of the album, & I got a very courteous email from Mr. Sam himself, who (alas) directed me to inquire directly to his label. Who then ignored me altogether big surprise, so no advance copy for me. March 1 is when I See The Sign comes out.