Album Review: Sam Amidon, Salt River

Salt River is Sam Amidon’s first release on River Lea Records, the division of Rough Trade that specialises in folk music, and the mothership to a gilded roster of Irish artists that includes John Francis Flynn, Ye Vagabonds and Lisa O’Neill (before she graduated to Rough Trade itself).

It’s a fine match. London-based Vermont native, Amidon, is a prospector of traditional – and not so traditional – tunes, reimagined through a folk, jazz and classical music prism, which is meat and drink to River Lea.

Take album centrepiece, the traditional Appalachian ballad ‘Golden Willow Tree’. Amidon reframes the sea shanty as a contemporary conservatory piece, with a minimalist delivery that's enigmatically ferocious. Elsewhere, ‘I’m On My Journey Home’ repurposes the 18th century New England folk song, through the delightful percussion of Philippe Melanson and producer Sam Gendel’s exquisite synth.

Its textures are as wonderful as they are surprising. Indeed, throughout Salt River, invention abounds. Lou Reed’s ‘Big Sky’ – the rock anthem that closed out 2000’s Ecstasy – is stretched on the Amidon/Gendel/Melanson canvas to stunning effect. Likewise, they carve a Sesame Street-style bedtime lullaby out of Yoko Ono’s experimental ‘Ask The Elephant’. Terrific stuff.

8/10

Out now