Sam Amidon is an outlier. He sets himself apart from his folk-inclined peers by embodying its traditions, rather than merely cribbing its sounds. This starts with his stark, affectless voice, which conveys more emotion with a wobbly note than most singers could manage with four octaves and a thesaurus: it continues through to his ability to wring untold tension out of the humble banjo. Previous album I See The Sign established Amidon’s aesthetic, setting that voice against a gentle backdrop of strings, horns, banjo and guitar. Bright Sunny South is a little different, with Amidon accompanied by a band on roughly half the songs. Their boisterous interventions, on the likes of squalling He’s Taken My Feet and As I Roved Out, make Amidon sound even lonelier when they depart once more.
It’s common practice to describe anything old-sounding as ‘timeless’. Well, Bright Sunny South doesn’t sound timeless, it sounds old-fashioned. It has, however, a timeless quality about it, in the haunted characters that Amidon summons: these men are either vainly trying to flee past traumas, or stoically marching into a grim future.
His cover of Mariah Carey’s Shake It Off, however, misses the mark. Amidon is a very good interpreter, able to locate the essential song-ness of just about anything (R Kelly, Tears For Fears) and warming it over with his spare, aching sensibility. Shake It Off is a bridge too far, though: If you’re going to reduce a song to words and chords, you’ll be needing a better class of words than this (although wisely, Amidon ditches the Louis Vuitton verse). This bung note is easily forgiven, though, coming as it does in the middle of such a strong album.
BY EDWARD SHARP-PAUL
Best Track: He’s Taken My Feet
If You Like These, You’ll Like This: Pink Moon NICK DRAKE, The Creek Drank The Cradle IRON & WINE
In A Word: Pastoral
