The 7th studio album by Sam Lewis is the 4th I have reviewed for W&H. The fact that I have forgotten the previous three shows what an un-deep impact they made on me. This doesn’t mean they are bad, just that they don’t stick in the memory.
His 2024 album, ‘Superposition’ was billed as ”a necessary evolution” and this latest one, produced by Joe McMahan, is self-described as “a departure from the departure” He seems to be saying to his listeners ‘I’m trying to change, I really am.’ As it is, we find the same mellow melodic groove and intimate reflections on love and fidelity. Pleasant but not particularly memorable.
The Light, a duet with Judy Blank, and the slightly more up tempo My Life Living Me are the highlights and the album ends with a respectful cover of the Indigo Girls’s Three County Highway.
All songs may arrive under the reassuring title ‘Everything’s Fine’ but Lewis admits of this phrase: ”I am definitely guilty of using it to define situations that are in fact NOT ‘fine’.
But whatever it is that is not ‘fine’ in his life doesn’t lead to any profound revelations or any real sense of drama. Lewis has the kind of genial, laid back delivery that voices a fatalistic go with the flow philosophy. His overall message is summarized with a banal truism:“we are all trying to get somewhere - all running from something or toward something.”
