Songdreaming [CD]

Sam Lee - Songdreaming [CD]

Sam Lee releases his fourth studio album, ‘songdreaming’, which was recorded throughout 2023 and sees Sam continue his work with producer Bernard Butler and long-term collaborator, arranger, and composer James Keay in creating an album rich in musicality and invention. Across the ten tracks, Sam delivers an album that ranges from more immediately identifiable acoustic songs to drone soundscapes through to the electric guitar and gospel choir propelled lead single, ‘Meeting Is A Pleasant Place’, featuring the recording debut of Trans Voices, a London based transgender choir. It is an album that can incorporate the beautiful balladry of ‘Sweet Girl McRee’ alongside the gospel tinges of ‘Leaves of Life’ whilst also housing the whiteout noise close of album opener ‘Bushes and Briars’, a song that details Sam’s rage at the treatment and condition of the natural world. What that means to the listener is a rich and evocative journey through the complex emotions created for Sam by his engagement with nature and his deep-felt affinity for it, drawing on sources as diverse as the sacred music of European and global mystic traditions, the work of neo-classical contemporary composers, and the simple effectiveness of a well delivered vocal melody. At the heart of ‘songdreaming’ is a belief in the fundamental power of music to connect and inspire. For Sam, these reimagined and reworked songs are more than a history, they are a living, breathing connection to our very being: “Those people who are and were singing the old songs here at home were also looking after the land. When we stop singing to the land, the land stops singing back.” It is an album that avoids simple classification, the revelation of an artist at the height of his creative powers, dedicated to both his message and its connection to its audience.