Sam Burton – I Can Go With You
Tompkins Square – 30 October 2020
From Salt Lake City and now based in Los Angeles, with Jarvis Taveniere producing and playing bass, I Can Go With You marks Sam Burton’s official debut after several years of releasing homemade cassettes, from which many of the tracks are revisited. Opening with the steadily chugging Nothing Touches Me with additional vocals from Kacey Johansing (also drums and keys) along with Shane Renfro on guitar, it reveals echoey baritone vocals evocative of Roy Orbison, moving into the relaxed, piano coloured, strum of I Can Go With You (“but only so far”), establishing the mid-tempo balladry that characterises the album. A similarly ruminative mood inform Why Should You Take Me There and, with Tim Ramsey’s pedal steel and stumbling drum pattern, Further From The Known, the latter calling to mind Tim Buckley, Tim Hardin and Fred Neill, both musically and introspective lyrics.
Stagnant Pool shifts the tenor to more of a pastoral country feel with resonating guitar without dramatically shifting the overall mood, those sometimes spacy, late 60s cosmic folk colours shading also I Am The Moon with its background strings and hints of Jim Webb/Glen Campbell, the slow walking beat of She Says That She Knows and the yearning, mourning ache of Illusion. It closes with, first the quiveringly sung, keyboards shimmering Wave Goodbye, echoes of early Cohen on the slow waltz Can It Carry Me with its minimal use of piano notes and shrugged drums feeling weighed down by melancholy, and finally the slow swaying rhythm and reverb guitar of Tomorrow Is An Ending with its recollections of the narcotic ethereal quality of those late 60s troubadours. Having been something of a treasured secret among the musical cognoscenti for the past decade, the time has come for Burton to take his overdue place on the wider stage.
Order via Bandcamp: https://tompkinssquare.bandcamp.com/album/i-can-go-with-you-2
Photo Credit: Jacob Boll