Bright Sunny South
Sam Amidon is a modern folk singer who can sound like Bert Jansch leading an indie pop band (during a cover of Tim McGraw\'s \"My Old Friend\") or like Alasdair Roberts at the piano (for a desolate read of Mariah Carey\'s \"Shake It Off\"). Most of his time, though, he\'s scouring public domain files for obscure folk songs that he can bring to life with sometimes arty, sometimes spare arrangements. \"He\'s Taken My Feet\" adds jazz trumpeter Kenny Wheeler for few bars of jazz inflection here and there, while Amidon finds a small band to bring the solemn hymn into a dissonant rage for its unexpected second half. Flashes of Terry Reid (circa his excellent 1973 album *River*) transform \"Pharaoh\" into a bucolic beauty of great tenderness and extend through the fiddle-enhanced \"Streets of Derry.\" A manic banjo matches the field holler that drives \"As I Roved Out,\" while the album comes full circle with \"Weeping Mary,\" a powerful tune that Amidon\'s parents recorded as part of a group that was signed to the same record label 36 years earlier.
Not quite as stylized as 2010’s I See the Sign, but certainly no less ambitious, Bright Sunny South is an austere album that emphasizes Amidon’s banjo playing and singing. He's worked with Thomas Bartlett again, with Steeleye Span/Vashti Bunyan engineer Jerry Boys joining the pack.
Not quite as stylized as 2010’s I See the Sign, but certainly no less ambitious, Bright Sunny South is an austere album that emphasizes Amidon’s banjo playing and singing. He's worked with Thomas Bartlett again, with Steeleye Span/Vashti Bunyan engineer Jerry Boys joining the pack.
While this album is by no means a huge leap forwards for Amidon it embodies so perfectly the traditions with which he is enamoured, and of which he is slowly becoming a part.
While this album is by no means a huge leap forwards for Amidon it embodies so perfectly the traditions with which he is enamoured, and of which he is slowly becoming a part.
During every long journey there are moments of looking back, of breathing in the vast traveled landscape as an inspiration…
During every long journey there are moments of looking back, of breathing in the vast traveled landscape as an inspiration…
A folk singer cast from an old-fashioned mould, Sam Amidon rearranges and repurposes songs from the ages, his albums to date principally reinterpreting hymns and trad folk standards – plus, often, a cover version of lesser vintage, with Tears for Fears and R Kelly gracing past releases and Bright Sunny South offering up an incongruously reworked Mariah Carey number.
A folk singer cast from an old-fashioned mould, Sam Amidon rearranges and repurposes songs from the ages, his albums to date principally reinterpreting hymns and trad folk standards – plus, often, a cover version of lesser vintage, with Tears for Fears and R Kelly gracing past releases and Bright Sunny South offering up an incongruously reworked Mariah Carey number.