Album Review: Sam Amidon - Bright Sunny South

American folk singer Sam Amidon returns with his seventh LP Bright Sunny South; a collection of reworked classics that have influenced his life in some way or another. He describes the album as “a sculpture garden of personal relics”, with each sound and lyric found within its walls acting as a talisman with interior meaning.

Title track Bright Sunny South opens the proceedings, which was originally written by bluegrass group Alison Krauss and Union Station, about a soldier leaving his family to defend his native land in war. Amidon's version is considerably slower in tempo and features slight changes to the lyrical content, conveying emotions of sorrow and pain to great effect. Mariah Carey's Shake It Off is unrecognisable (thank goodness!) when he takes it on, using only his vocals and piano accompaniments in a minimalist composition which addresses only a small portion of the original's lyrical content. Groundhog is the beautiful guitar piece which follows, running for under 50 seconds, yet still managing to bring a feeling of warmth to the album, which is a nice change from the sombre, serious tone of many of the other tracks. Closing song Weeping Mary is one of the stand-out pieces of the collection, with Doug Wieselman's clarinet contributions acting as a star attraction to the song. As the track comes to a close, the atmospheric sounds gradually overtake from Amidon's vocals in order to create this fuzzy, blissed-out state of sound, which is a powerful note to end on. Bright Sunny South leaves Amidon's reputation for strong, emotional resonance through music untarnished, and is a truly pleasing body of work.