Sam Fender
People Watching
★★★★
POLYDOR
The North Shields Springsteen isn’t messing about - three nights on sale at Newcastle United’s stadium and production on his third album from The War On Drugs’ Adam Granduciel, plus Markus Dravs (Arcade Fire, Björk, Wolf Alice). The result is a vast, bittersweet communion – like the ghost of Wilfred Owen leading a sweeping terrace incantation. There’s also communion with music past. The title track ripples with Don Henley’s The Boys Of Summer. Nostalgia’s Lie invokes The Stone Roses’ Ten Storey Love Song. But these echoes seem more reverential than theft, part of the emotive reach in a poignant portrait of post-industrial Britain – one that’s meditative rather than defeated, leavened by some less-than-commonplace vocabulary (kittiwakes, embryonic, “hypothesise a hero’s rise”). The closing Remember My Name is just soulful vocals and cloistered horns but sounds like a mass epiphany at a future Glastonbury headline slot.
People Watching it out now on Polydor.
LISTEN/BUY: Spotify | Apple Music | Amazon | Rough Trade | HMV
TRACKLIST:
People Watching
Nostalgia’s Lie
Chin Up
Wild Long Lie
Arm’s Length
Crumbling Empire
Little Bit Closer
Rein Me In
TV Dinner
Something Heavy
Remember My Name
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