There’s no doubt in Sam Fender being a voice of his generation; confirmed by his stunning third album, People Watching.
The world is bleak right now, and no one in music seems to want to talk about it. The political album is largely dead, with the sphere of popular music little more than a playground of image crafting, empty love stories and distractive hedonism. Step in Sam Fender; one of the boldest, bravest songwriters of his generation.
“I’m not preaching I’m just talking,” he shrugs on “Crumbling Empire”, a mid-list standout from his astounding Polydor-shared third album, People Watching. And that’s it—his stinging observations are little more than the truth, rarely dramatised and always shaped from his own experiences. The North Shields singer-songwriter takes you to his council estate upbringing, to his struggles with societies hollowness, and to his disillusionment with the increasingly autocracy that befalls the world around him.
And yet his songs are stadium fillers. They’re grandiose pieces of commercially friendly art that invade BBC Radio 1 but could moonlight as the soundtrack to a Ken Loach film. Perhaps no one else in the British industry walks that seemingly impossible tightrope.
Where he sounded romantically bitter on his debut Hypersonic Missiles and pain-stricken on its follow up Seventeen Going Under, on People Watching Fender sounds defiant. He’s matured in his message, and in the curation of his own sound; wiggling at his inner conscious whilst tightening its screw.
He pushes his sonic comfort zone to new lengths on electro-tinged and theatrical cut “TV Dinner” and rousing horn-touched closer “Remember My Name”. There’s monumental hooks aplenty, and quiet moments of intimacy when he allows his sentimentality to do the talking.
It’s been a long-time coming, but with this, his third and best album, Fender traverses expectation and affirms his name and his intension. And, of course, his distaste for some of the people that he has been watching, and his love for others.
Listen to the album…
Words – Ben Tibbits
