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Album Reviews
Album Review: Sam Amidon – I See The Sign (Bedroom Community)
By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 31 March 2010
Sam Amidon’s 2007 album ‘This Chicken Proved Falsehearted’ brought his often cracked and fractured voice to the fore, set against a fairly sparse accompaniment, while it’s follow up ‘All Is Well’ pushed the boat out with a lush backdrop of strings and horn.
This album sees that sonic sensibility continued and expanded upon, featuring some incredibly well-crafted string, brass and piano arrangements from Amidon’s labelmate Nico Muhly and immaculate production from Valgeir Sigurðsson (owner of Bedroom Community).
Known for his idiosyncratic re-workings of both old folk songs and more contemporary popular tunes, here you’ll find Amidon duetting with Beth Orton on their own version of various children’s singing games, croaking out an ultra mournful version of the traditional song ‘Rain And Snow’ and even managing to take an R Kelly(!) song, ‘Relief’, and turn it into a pretty little paean of hope. ‘Pretty Fair Damsel’ encapsulates everything that makes this album a real pleasure to sit and listen to; the strings and piano soar and swell, but in such an understated way you immediately want to go back in and pick out all the fine details.
The way Amidon takes centuries old tunes and re-configures them to reflect his own maturing worldview is always inspiring, but here it’s his collaborators who really help to lift his vision up to something pretty special. TH
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