There’s no mistaking the rallying call that Sam Lee’s songdreaming represents, but that call rings out from music that demands to be explored in its own right. It pleases on so many levels; the significance of the stories told by the lyrics builds in your mind, while powerful arrangements do what music does best, evoking emotional response after emotional response.
It only takes a glance at the menu page of Sam Lee’s website to realise we’re dealing with a powerhouse of creative talent. Under the heading All Projects, he lists sixteen areas. They start from the expected core musical topics, folk song performance and composition, both with an impressive array of collaborations. Other projects extend to a variety of media-related activities, including podcasts, radio hosting, and the artistic director of the Nest Collective. But interlaced with these come Nature Activism and Awareness, Pilgrimages and Nature Guiding. You don’t need to delve very far into his descriptions of these projects before realising he is every bit as passionate about them as he is about music. The duality is nothing new for Sam, but this latest album, songdreaming, sits firmly and deliberately at the intersection of the two passions.
His principal collaborators on the album have a history of recording and/or touring with Sam. James Keay on piano, Joshua Green on percussion and Misha Mullov-Abbado on double bass. Along with producer and electric guitarist Bernard Butler, they were the core of the team that recorded Sam’s previous album, Old Wow. A further essential component is added to songdreaming by violinist Jo O’Keefe. The album’s press release identifies other, more exotic but anonymous contributions, the multi-stringed Arabian qanun, a nyckelharpa, the keyed fiddle from Sweden, and the small pipes. The PR then leaves the attentive listener guessing by adding “and more”. But, as ever, at the heart of all the tracks is Sam’s rich, powerful voice, joined for one notable track by Trans Voices a London based transgender choir.
The album opens with Bushes and Briars, a song title from the English tradition that will be familiar to many. Indeed, the opening two lines could belong to an arrangement of that song, while more heavily percussive, nonetheless recognisable. But that similarity soon changes as Sam’s lyrics expound a tale not of a young girl’s unrequited love but of the increasingly parlous state of the natural world. As the lyrics explore the dark consequences of our neglect of the environment, the song’s arrangement builds and builds in volume, complexity and shear sonic audacity. If Sam’s aim is to wake up the listener, alerting them to the catastrophe that awaits our planet, the climax of this opening track could at least achieve that in a literal sense, no one is likely to sleep through it.
The following track, Meeting is a Pleasant Place, opens quietly with Sam’s vocal nod to the song’s distant cousin, Courting is a Pleasure. In contrast with the agitated gloom of the previous track, “Meeting” is more about reminding us of the pleasure that strolling in the countryside can bring, especially when accompanied by a significant other. For this stroll, though, Sam is accompanied, initially, by a calming beat from Tom Toms. Eventually, the choir adds its voices along with electric guitar, the voices later engaging with Sam’s lyrics in a very effective question-and-answer style.
It’s easy enough to pick out recurrent themes, both instrumentally and lyrically, in the ten songs that make up this album. Instrumentality, Sam repeatedly interposes calm with passages of frenetic, threatening intensity, his lyrics then forging links to the battle that needs to be fought to protect the natural world. Sam makes no bones about his mission. His challenge is to ensure that the consequences of complacency in the face of climate change, combined with a wider lack of respect for the natural environment, are spelt out to anyone who will listen. His work as a folk song collector made him certain that the connection he feels between folk song and the natural world arises as a consequence of a wider truth. In his own words, “Those people who are and were singing the old songs here at home were also looking after the land. When we stop singing to the land, the land stops singing back.”
There’s no mistaking the rallying call that songdreaming represents but that call rings out from music that demands to be explored in its own right. At its foundation is the enthralling combination of drumming and double bass that Joshua and Mishra develop. The opening few bars of tracks tend to provide the best opportunities to enjoy their interplay, free of competition from other instruments. But it is ubiquitous, frequently along with James’ piano, setting a structure for the melody instruments to explore. Of these, Jo’s violin is most often heard, ranging from gently melodic to screamingly intense, sometimes in the same track.
Having largely treated vocal and instrumental aspects separately, it’s worthwhile to bring them back together. The album pleases on so many levels, the pleasure building with each listen, letting the significance of the stories told by the lyrics build in your mind while powerful arrangements do what music does best, evoking emotional response after emotional response.
Songdreaming is out now on Cooking Vinyl – https://slee.lnk.to/songdreaming
Sam and his band are currently on a UK-wide tour: https://samleesong.co.uk/live/