Sam Evian - Plunge Review
Evian’s fourth album plunges into the deep end of 70s groove, country-rock and synth-blues to surface cool and triumphant with a renewed, whole-bodied sound.
When Sam Evian made his return to London in Oslo, Hackney, after half a decade away, the crowd couldn’t contain their appreciation of his piano-playing, guitar-twanging, blues-singing musicianship – ‘we love you, Sam!’ numerous voices interjected in moments of lull. Now Sam has released his fourth album, this sentiment has only increased; Sam provides Beatles-inspired rock n’ roll with ease, swagger, and sheer collaborative glee on fourth album ‘Plunge’.
Nowhere is the album stronger than in its opening. Sam begins with his self-confessed favourite track on the album, ‘Wild Days’. Just listen to those guitar fills in the shifts from chorus to verse, elastic and free. His vocals have an echoey quality that marry well with the high piano chords, imbuing the track with a timeless, classic quality. ‘Jacket’ is a roll down the window and smile at the view song, at its best burnt onto old-school CDs and passed among friends. The importance of Sam’s band is evident. It is refreshing to hear a ‘solo’ artist platform this so clearly. This one is all over my summer playlist.
In ‘Rollin’ In’, Evian’s saxophonist past comes licking like a friendly dog, etching tiny tables in poky bars engulfed in curling cigarette smoke into to the warm gold of the track. ‘Saw you standing there, lonely in the garden’, Evian sings in the second verse, ‘made me feel like time left us hours ago’. This speaks to the track’s palatability, rinsed in circles until, unbeknownst to listener, it’s three hours later and only the gorgeously understated bass has been thumping through a spring sky just as deep-blue. For sure the album’s highlight.
Sam here switches into more formulaic country-rock in ‘Why Does It Take So Long’, doubled-up vocals and rushing tempo all fun and games, as is follow-up ‘Freakz’ whose sexy distorted vocals, teasing bass riff and synth melody line are seamless and so self-assured. ‘Wind Blows’ is fully rounded and carefully produced, proving that Evian certainly knows how to milk a key for all it’s worth. Not once on the album does Evian let on the pressure he feels to make music in a post-COVID world; this ability to swagger in the face of fear is the secret to the album’s success. When pushed about genre, Evian admitted to Still Listening that he’d like to think he’s just good old rock n’ roll. The proof is in the pudding.
Evian’s adoration of the Beatles yells happily in track ‘Runaway’. Sam wrote much of the album from the perspective of his parents, who split for a while just to re-kindle their romance, which is evident in the retrospective and didactic lyricism. The vocables and blues guitar only add to this mastery. We close out with ‘Another Way’, the shortest track on the album written when Evian ‘comes down off the mountain and folds [his] heart away’, and finally ‘Stay’, a pre-released single already beloved by fans, loose and languid and still thick with bite.
Sam’s band sprinkled with familiar names like Adrianne Lenker and El Kempner spent 10 days pushing his pre-written tracks into new directions and finding inspiration in everything from surf-pop to 70s groove. Thanks to this, the album is both slick and free-wheeling, collaborative and sharp-focussed. The waves are gonna keep on rolling in, Sam warms us in ‘Plunge’… if they forever sound like this, we say – let them.