After 20 years in the music business and constant touring with various projects, Samuel JamesTaylor was approaching burn out until the pandemic forced a period of much needed self-reflection. He used to be singer in a band called Dead Like Harry before going solo.
A nostalgia for simpler times pervades the album, signalled by the childhood photo chosen for the cover.
Although Taylor hails from Sheffield, the songs owe more to America than South Yorkshire. The album was recorded in Nashville with friend and producer, Neilson Hubbard.
The easy-going set of thirteen melodic folk tunes are one-paced and just a bit too full of sugar , spice and all things nice.
Promising titles like Exquisite Pain and Rage And Fight turn out to be still more sentimental songs – “you are everything …the light that shines……the birds that sing” the smitten singer coos on the latter. Where does the raging and fighting come in one wonders.
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Taylor calls the album a love letter to life. This is a worthy aim but by glossing over the darker feelings of isolation and loneliness he says lie behind the songs, all we get is the world seen through rose-tinted spectacles.
Samuel James Taylor’s website
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