★★★★★
The centerpiece of Sam Amidon's fifth proper record is a nine-minute song called "Lily-O", which opens with Amidon singing a lengthy a cappella epilogue about three suitors courting three ladies. It's austerely quiet until two minutes into the song, when a second instrument enters--a single crackle of electric guitar, sharp and splintery, like a log sparking in a fireplace. Amidon is settling in for a long story that is less about marriage and more about betrayal, violence, death, and loss...
- pitchfork.com
2014-10-09
★★★★★
has never shied away from testing the patience of his listener. His music relies on people being happy to commit to takes on timeless, traditional Americana and folk pieces. He meanders and dawdles, letting the old songs drift through loose arrangements and spacious textures. But even taking all of this into consideration, is a particularly subtle listen, finding Amidon at his most downbeat in years, especially juxtaposed with last year's comparatively svelte and zippy ...
- www.drownedinsound.com
2014-10-06
★★★★★
Rocking and Persevering
New Albums From Weezer, Sam Amidon and Rich Gang
Photo
Scott Shriner, the bassist for Weezer, which has released "Everything Will Be Alright in the End" (Republic).
Credit
Kevin Winter/Getty Images for Clear Channel
Weezer and its songwriter and frontman, Rivers Cuomo, have always...
- www.nytimes.com
2014-10-07
★★★★★
Label:
Nonesuch
Release Date:
29/09/2014
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Sam Amidon has never shied away from testing the patience of his listener. His music relies on people being happy to commit to takes on timeless, traditional Americana and folk pieces. He meanders and dawdles, letting the old songs drift through loose arrangements and spacious textures...
- drownedinsound.com
2014-10-07
★★★★★
On Lily-O, as with much of Sam Amidon's catalog, songs are sourced from traditional folk tunes. These are songs passed down through generations, and Amidon looks at them with great scrutiny. His versions are not nostalgic or stuck in time, but vividly reimagined. The title track tells the story of a girl being stabbed on her wedding day, finding herself forced to write her will -- doling out her bloody clothes and lifelong pain and suffering to family members...
- www.wonderingsound.com
2014-09-30
★★★★★
Vermont-born folk musician Sam Amidon spent much of his recording career reinventing traditional and public domain folk songs and occasionally dropping in a more rustic reading of a modernized R&B tune, effectively bending traditional mountain songs, folk-blues, and Mariah Carey songs around his rusty vocals and pristine arrangements. Beginning somewhere around his 2007 album All Is Well, Amidon began honing his voice and built further upward with each consecutive album...
- www.allmusic.com
2014-10-03
★★★★★
Sam Amidon is a Northeast American folk singer-songwriter who is currently stationed in London. Starting with his 2001 release of Irish traditional standards played on the fiddle, Amidon's career follows like-minded artists such as Andrew Bird and Miral Wagner in his creation of sweeping melodic ballads often accompanied by baroque instrumentation and effects.
The tracks are modern interpretations of traditional American folk songs with wholly Amidon flairs that make them entirely his...
- www.musicomh.com
2014-09-30
★★★★★
Rousing banjo and fiddle work ... Sam Amidon Sam Amidon's new set of "reimagined folk songs" is a compellingly quiet, intense affair that is remarkable both for the power of his understated, no-nonsense and often mournful vocals, and for the subtle arrangements that bring an urgency to his mostly traditional American songs and hymns...
- www.theguardian.com
2014-09-26
★★★★★
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...
- www.beat.com.au
2013-06-20
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