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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
We were all born...to own this cd, March 7, 2005
This is a great great record and should be on any critics short list for best alternative record of 2004 (or 2003. Essentially the same album was released by Universal - Canada in 03 and it sold 50,000 copies winning Mr. Roberts a Juno award for the song Brother Down.) This cd is extremely well-conceived and is a finely executed work that deserves more attention than it is getting. There are some other bands that have the same type of groove (Jet, Powderfinger, Paris Texas - maybe) but Sam Roberts is probably the best of all of these.
He is an amazing songwriter and his tunecrafting skills stand up well next to early Brian Wilson and Paul McCartney (of course realizing that he is just a beginner.) His hooks are instantly catchy and you will find yourself tapping your feet within the first 30 seconds of "Hard Road" - the opening track. Along with Brother Down, Taj Mahal, and Every Part of Me, Hard Road is a stand-out track and contains some gripping and intelligent lyrics (something of a rarity in today's reductionistic and formulaic music world!) He is young but writes with eloquence about the ubiquitous human efforts at finding the easy life and avoiding the bumps of the real world. He opines, "There's no road that ain't a hard road to travel on." Like Pierce Pettis (another overlooked genius) he is able to chronicle the travails of life in this fallen world without offering therapeutic platitudes like "believing in yourself" or something similar. While true hope and significant answers are missing, art does not by nature have to be redemptive. On this record, Roberts chooses to narrate the problems of humanity and creation rather than offer solutions, but in doing so he manages to escape falling into the Disneyesque moralism so prevalent in popular media and music.
Along with compelling and inquiring lyrics, and great songcraft, Sam Roberts is also an interesting musician and decides here to play all the instruments except for percussion. This rarely works (Lenny Kravitz' "Let Love Rule" is the only other recent success that I can think of) but Sam Roberts pulls it off and the record ends up sounding like it was recorded with a talented studio band. Production and mixing efforts are handled by Brenndan McGuire, but to discover this you have to search; his name is buried in minute font in the credits of the Universal release. To my knowledge, he is a newcomer, but he is talented and should get some more work after this excellent outing at the helm.
Enjoy this record, Sam will be around for a while
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Talented ex-hockey player makes a beautiful CD, January 2, 2005
Sam Roberts is a standout songwriter/guitarist whose first full-length CD is a rare gem in a bleak landscape of too-packaged, too-plastic pop tripe dominating the airwaves these days. I've read other reviewers' comparisons to other musicians; but he makes me think of Ben Harper without the reggae and all of the passion. His lyrics are full of soul and realism but still manage to resonate as deeply poetic: "We were born in a flame/we need a cool breeze and a summer rain/we are stealing from ourselves/we are feeding off ourselves." (from "Where Have All the Good People Gone?")
His style is mostly grass-roots rock with some folk and punk mixed in--with "Don't Walk Away Eileen" and "On the Run," he gives a tip of the hat to the post-garage bands that have been infiltrating the underground for the past few years. "Brother Down" and "Higher Learning" are standout songs, as is "Rareified" with its masterful integration of a rhythmic bassline and complementary guitar along with well-paced vocals.
Some of the songs are throwaway filler bits ("No Sleep" and the drudgerous "Dead End"); but overall, Sam Roberts proves himself to be a soulful and sincere voice that is refreshing and much-needed in today's overcommercialized music world. If you have to take a chance on one CD for which you haven't yet heard the songs on the radio, I definitely recommend it as a good purchase.
For anyone who's never heard of Sam Roberts and wants to take a chance on a promising new artist, this Bud's for you.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
very solid debut, January 28, 2007
I bought this CD after hearing a "brother down" and "don't walk away eileen", and overall, it is very good. The album starts out with a bang as the first 6 tracks are possibly my favorite 6 songs that go in sequence on any album. He could have spread out the good songs with the not so great ones however. After the first 6, the only ones that are worth listening to are "rarefied" and "no sleep". What you do have here though is 8 very good songs that make purchasing this album worth while.
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is Sam Roberts' 
