FILTER ALBUMS
A sense of wonder
Folk-ar t evangelist sinks into the green, green grass of home.
By Jim Wirth.
Sam Lee
★★★★
songdreaming
COOKING VINYL. CD/DL/LP
“WE DON’T have the tools with which to relate to nature any more,” Sam Lee tells MOJO as he tries to explain the thought behind his Ber nard Butlerproduced fourth LP. “I’m a guide in that sense and music is my sort of Pan pipe, tr ying to bring people over into a new way of feeling towards what loving nature can be.” Momentarily, he catches himself and pauses. “I’m wor ried this is all sounding like total bullshit.”
If you want an excuse to stop reading, it’s worth noting that songdreaming (note: self-conscious lower-case ‘s’) is a collection of new songs full of bits recycled from traditional material, suffused with gaunt Astral Weeks jazz vibes perfor med by a north Londoner who – for one of his many side hustles – brings people out to the fields at night so they can watch him sing with nightingales.
The 43-year-old’s unashamedly florid lyrical style may – for some – bring back har rowing memories of studying the romantic poets (as he rectorates nobly on the luscious McCrimmon: “Where England’s mist lifts from her greening, a curlew croons in delight of this revealing”). Painfully ear nest, songdreaming is in essence a record about countr y walks and the mystical power of landscape suffused with a deep belief that music might begin the process of healing the planet at a time of ecological apocalypse. If it had been released in 1989, there’s a strong possibility that it would have featured Nigel Kennedy.