Sam Amidon heads to Iceland to record a follow up to his 2007 album But This Chicken Proved Falsehearted with arranger Nico Muhly and producer Valgeir Sigurðsson. The result of this collaboration is heard in All is Well.

“Last time I said that Amidon had made the most interesting folk album of 2007; suddenly he's one of our most powerful chroniclers of the myriad varieties and shades of grace. All Is Well is viscerally stunning, comforting, upsetting, entrancing...”

-Stylus Magazine

“Sam Amidon has worked several different wonders with All Is Well—giving these beautiful old songs new life, drastically transforming the music of Samamidon without losing any of the power of their debut, providing in 48 short minutes life, death, love, romance, murder, forgiveness, anguish, hope, loss and magic.

-Popmatters.com

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REVIEWS / PRESS

From Rolling Stone Magazine

A Big Quiet

All Is Well (Bedroom Community), by Sam Amidon — or Samamidon, as it says on the cover — is his deceptively ornate adaptation of ten traditional blues and folk songs. In an era of overheated Nick Drake comparisons, Amidon is eerily close to the real thing, singing in a fragile but certain tenor against the deep breath and soft sweep of Nico Muhly’s orchestrations. A better analogy is the big quiet in Björk’s Vespertine and Medúlla albums. Producer Valgeir Sigurdsson worked on both records; he conjures a similar, pregnant resonance here around Amidon’s voice and plucked-wire guitar — a public domain that is all inner space.

David Fricke

________

from CMJ New Music Monthly

Sam Amidon - All Is Well

On All Is Well, Sam Amidon's woeful voice is honey-tinged yet slightly hoarse, as if he's been singing into the wind on a wildflower-strewn Appalachian mountainside. But the 26-year-old is not undiscovered back-country banjo-strummer. In addition to playing with Doveman, Stars Like Fleas Assembly, Nico Muhly, Childsplay, Wild Asparagus and family project the Amidons, he has also released three solo albums. For his fourth, Amidon plucks obscure Appalachian folk songs and adds a dash of whimsy and modern sensibility. All Is Well is like something that your great-grandpappy from West Virginny and your favorite emo-anarchist from Billyburg would produce if they were locked in a room with nothing but a viola, Wurlitzer and transistor radio blaring Moran Lee "Dock" Boggs. And no wonder: The record hails from Icelandic collective Bedroom Community, brainchild of Bjork and Bonnie 'Prince' Billy collaborator Valgeir Sigurdsson. Sigurdsson produced All Is Well, and his gift for balancing quirky newfangled touches with the classic sounds of strummin' git-down imprints itself all over. In less skilled hands, the lyrics "Well, my little Doney Gal, don't you guess/Better be making your wedding dress/Well, it's already made, trimmed in green/Prettiest dress you've ever seen" would seem embarrassingly earnest. But Amidon's sedate voice and innovative arrangements bury the cloying qualities in a layer of dusky gravel, providing such moments a surprising emotional intensity. "Little Johnny Brown" perfectly embodies the album's lovely paradoxes: Labyrinthine instrumental layers seasoned with percussive textures, Nico Muhly's piano work and Eyvind Kang's eerie viola transform a straightforward folk band ballad into nothing less than a goose-bump-manufacturing sonic piéce de résistance. 

Kathleen Wilcox

________

from PITCHFORK

Sam Amidon All Is Well

[Bedroom Community; 2007]

Rating: 7.8

Samamidon (or Sam Amidon, as he sometimes bills himself) hails from Vermont and is the scion of a musical family with roots in Appalachia. A contributor to such indie projects as Doveman and Stars Like Fleas, he recorded five albums with his band Assembly before releasing a debut solo album of traditional Irish tunes performed on solo fiddle. A second full-length, But This Chicken Proved Falsehearted, out last year on Plug Research, might be called his first "proper" release, if only because it was the first with a marketing push and a wide availability. Even so, it didn't move too far from what came before: old folk songs translated to new, modern contexts. And a Tears for Fears cover.

Amidon's new album, the ominously titled All Is Well (very little is ever well in these songs), again includes new readings of public domain compositions, and yet it feels like a great leap forward, thanks to Amidon's more relaxed approach and the contributions of composer Nico Muhly, himself a Vermonter. Where Chicken was well-meaning but occasionally dry, the trio of artists responsible for the record-- Amidon, Muhly, and Icelandic producer Valgeir Sigurðsson (All Is Well was recorded at Sigurðsson's Greenhouse Studios in Reykjavik and released on his Bedroom Community label)-- create a very specific space with these arrangements, which goes beyond simply setting mood and atmosphere. These songs inhabit their own world, closed off from the rest of humanity. Eschewing the hammy theatrics of indie folkies like Langhorne Slim and Two Gallants, All Is Well is an exceedingly private album, designed to usher you in and shut out everything else around you. It's a headphones album, but not one that relies on studio effects to maintain your interest.

It helps that these songs typically traffic in internal monologues with a first-person narrator. In "Saro" Amidon sings the part of an immigrant from an unnamed country who describes the vast land around him and takes both grief and solace in missing his true love back home. Later, the singer inhabits the title character of "Prodigal Son", matter-of-factly recounting his fateful homecoming. Amidon sells these sentiments with a soft croak, not unpretty but also not expected. Despite his lifelong training, he manages to sound untrained-- a regular soul comforting himself with music before confronting a bleak world again. His voice breaks evocatively when he hits the high notes on Dock Boggs' "Sugar Baby", conveying the continual ache of a lost loved one: "I'll rock the cradle when you're gone," Amidon sings, as if mustering the stoicism needed to face the next day.

Muhly's arrangements prove decidedly more modern, drawing inspiration from the repetitions of Philip Glass, the drones of Max Richter, and the flutteriness of Sufjan Stevens. "Little Johnny Brown", a folk tune popularized by Ella Jenkins in the 1960s, percolates with ambient noise-- fragments of piano, pots and pans percussion, unidentified thumps-- that coalesces into a calamitous drone. Surprisingly, it works. Throughout All Is Well, Amidon, Muhly, and Sigurðsson slow these songs considerably, but the curious instrumentation ensures they never lose momentum. Banjo and spoons generate tension on "Fall on My Knees" as a lone fiddle swirls in the background, and "Wild Bill Jones" and "O Death" are anchored by mournful horn fanfares and sustained piano notes that fade in and out between Amidon's vocals.

All Is Well is sequenced so that the uptempo tunes crowd the album's middle section, offsetting the gravity of what comes before and will come afterwards with a pair of celebratory songs. Flickering woodwinds and heavy strings add a sense of theatrical expectancy to the relatively spry "Wedding Dress" and "Little Satchel", which complement each other nicely and give a hopeful spin to an otherwise grave album. Occasionally, Muhly's score sounds too busy for such modest songs, but mostly the instruments interact so closely with Amidon's understated vocals that the arrangement and the performance become indistinguishable. This quality makes All Is Well a very forward-thinking album, despite its reliance on traditional tunes. With his team of musicians working so closely together, Amidon doesn't just update the old world to the new, but finds the roots of the new world in the old.

___________

From THE MILK FACTORY

SAM AMIDON

All Is Well

HVALUR4CD/LP

Bedroom Community 2007

10 Tracks. 47mins49secs

In just over a year, Icelandic imprint Bedroom Community, headed by Björk and Bonnie Prince Billy (amongst others) collaborator Valgeir Sigurðsson, have distilled some of the most interesting records around, first with Nico Muhly’s delicate Speaks Volumes, then with Ben Frost’s textural Theory Of Machines, and, more recently with Sigurðsson’s own stellar pop opus Ekvilibrium.

Joining them is folk singer Sam Amidon, a twenty-six year old musician from Brattleboro, Vermont, who currently lives in New York. He shares his time between his solo project and various bands, including Doveman, Stars Like Fleas and The Amidons, a band formed by his parents and dedicated to traditional dance and music forms. Sam’s first album, Solo Fiddle, released in 2001, collected his interpretations of traditional Irish fiddle pieces recorded with Assembly, a folk band that Sam formed when he was a teenager and which also features his drummer brother Stefan. Earlier this year, Sam returned with But The Chicken Proved False Hearted, a collaboration with Thomas Bartlett, published on Plug Research, which focused on songs cherry-picked from the vast repertoire of traditional American folk music.

The same process informs All Is Well. Ten songs, lifted from the Appalachian folklore and given a resolutely fresh sheen under the expert hand of Sigurðsson. Sam, who, besides vocal duties, also plays banjo, acoustic and electric guitar and fiddle on one track, is surrounded by brother Stefan (drums on Wild Bill Jones and Wedding Dress), Nico Muhly (piano and orchestral arrangements), Ben Frost (programming and bass), Aaron Siegel (percussive textures and glockenspiel), Eyvind Kang (viola), Morse (additional vocals on Little Satchel), and Sigurðsson (bass, electronics, harmonium and percussion).

All Is Well is a rather beautiful collection of delicate traditional songs set against intricately woven backdrops, with Amidon’s smoky voice often placed a little forward in the mix, as to emphasise the down to earth aspect of the project. Far from being restricted to traditional folk arrangements, the songs are given ambitious brushes of strings, brass and discreet electronics, yet this only serves to stress the natural variations and strengths of the melodies. On the bittersweet tale of ordinary jealousy Wild Bill Jones, Nico Muhly, on piano, provides a warm counterpoint to Amidon’s plucked guitar motifs. Strings and brass touches are added as the song gains momentum, with Stefan Amidon coming in so delicately toward the end that he goes almost unnoticed. It is Muhly again who gives definition to Wedding Dress and Little Satchel by weaving rich orchestral tapestries upon which banjo and acoustic guitar draw subtle lines.

Things kick off pretty low key with Sugar Baby, on which acoustic and electric guitars provide the bulk of the accompaniment. Later, O Death appears to head in a similar direction at first, with the voice casting a shadow on a single melody played on the banjo, but the outlook becomes more inviting as elements are discretely added, while the delicate acoustic ornamentations of Fall On My Knees and Prodigal Son benefit from a more elaborate treatment, but retain the sparkle of their acoustic shell.

With All Is Well, Sam Amidon has crafted a precious gem of a record, all in nuances and shades, with delicate overtones and airy harmonies. Sigurðsson’s production is light and subtle yet it gives these songs fantastic depth and contrast without ever overshadowing Amidon’s delivery. The Bedroom Community family is growing, but the standards are as high as ever.

4.7/5

________

from STYLUS MAGAZINE

Sam Amidon - All Is Well

Bedroom Community 2008

I hope I speak for everyone reading this when I say that it's not unusual for a song to make your heart stop. Often, though, it only happens once you've already become acquainted, a fourth or fifth or tenth listen suddenly opening up the music in ways you wouldn't have imagined before. What's rare is to have that sudden interior leap the first time you hear a song. Sam Amidon's version of “Saro” did just that back in September, courtesy of its homemade video. Those muted, expressive horns, so different from the sparse sweep of Amidon's But This Chicken Proved Falsehearted, nailed me immediately. As Amidon mournfully sings (now more deadpan, mysteriously wise naif than folk Kermit), “I wish I was a poet / Could write infinite / I'd write my love a letter / One she'd long understand” over Arvo Pärt-esque strings and his own hesitant guitar pluck, I wasn't quite sure what was happening, but I knew I had been grotesquely undervaluing Amidon.

In my review of his debut, I'd wondered if Amidon “could do half as well without such strong, already established material” to draw on. I didn't mean much by it at the time, but looking back at it: bullshit. I was about a half step away from falling into the old fallacy whereby singing a song you've written is automatically more valuable than singing someone else's; I think I was trying to make a point about the possible novelty value of an album of old Appalachian folk covers (and if I was worried about that, my enduring affection for Amidon's debut with Thomas Bartlett since February suggests I was being overly cautious), but it came out wrong. Amidon's strength is exactly that he refracts his talent and art through these songs, old enough to bear the weight of dozens or hundreds of versions, and “Saro” is ample proof.

Or rather “Pretty Saro,” as heard on an old Watson Family album as well as plenty of other places... the thing about the kind of very old, public domain music that Amidon draws from, the thing that makes it easy to frustrate and confuse us modern internet-based music listeners, is that it is for many of our intents and purposes untraceable. Wikipedia has never heard of “Pretty Saro,” as far as I can tell; there isn't a single definitive set of lyrics floating around the various dubious lyric compendiums that haunt the internet. The sample you can hear on the Amazon page for Watson Family Tradition sounds nothing like Amidon's. He's reharmonized the song (something he did sparingly on Chicken, but on every song here), changed the melody, and either found some old lyrics I can't or else written his own. Given my own academic interest in the identity of songs over time, certainly I find his transformations on All Is Well intriguing; but I'd have to get over the gut-punch emotional and aesthetic reactions I have to the music to really focus on that.

Unlike Chicken's two-handed, home recorded origins, this time Amidon decamped to Iceland to work with Nico Muhly, who arranged the strings, horns, and woodwinds that along with Amidon and his guitar/banjo form the heart of these songs. Muhly has worked with Björk, Antony, Philip Glass, and many others, but on the basis of All Is Well alone I'm willing to start dubbing him a genius. These songs are never fenced in by the ensemble, and Amidon never sounds out of place fronting a mini-orchestra (something that the admittedly great dry drum-machine stamp of his “Louis Collins” would never have led me to believe). Amidon has picked a group of songs about leaving and doubt and death that the never-lugubrious backing marries with perfectly. The senseless violence in “Wild Bill Jones” (sung by a narrator who is heedlessly proud of it, even as Amidon's dead tone undercuts him at every turn), the petrifying fear in “O Death,” the ache in “Sugar Baby” and “Saro” all make the beauty of Amidon and Muhly's music even more piercing.

As sky-scrapingly great as “Saro” is, however, the key section of All Is Well is the end. After “O Death” (familiar to many from Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?, but here sung with a kind of calm breathlessness that heightens the feeling of doomed pleading) Amidon launches into “Prodigal Son,” one of four tracks adapted from Dock Boggs. The constant refrain of “I believe I'll go back home / Acknowledge I done wrong” is mournful yet clear-eyed—at first. The son, returning home, seeks only a servant's place, can't bring himself to believe in or even hope for any mercy from his father. And yet, of course, the father immediately embraces him. But here, even after the father's quasi-miraculous reaction, Amidon's son continues to mutter the refrain to himself. His guilt doesn't feel assuaged by the father's joy and forgiveness; it's uncertain if he even hears it.

To follow that up with the title track, an 18th century New England folk hymn sung from the prospective of a dying man that culminates with the lines “My sins forgiven / Forgiven I am free,” sung in a tone fraught with wonder, and the subsequent repetition of the title.... admittedly I am a sucker for art that accepts our common mortality, but the combination is devastating and uplifting nonetheless. Somehow Amidon snuck behind my back when I wasn't looking and became one of the few artists who aren't Low who can address faith, guilt, sin, religion in general without becoming trite, arrogant, or didactic. This is an album that turns the Georgian Islands children's singing game “Little Johnny Brown” into something rustling and haunting, feedback chirps bleeding through Amidon's voice as the repeated “fold the other corner, little Johnny Brown” begins to acquire strange and unsettling meaning of its own. To hear Amidon practice similar alchemy on “O Death”/”Prodigal Son”/”All Is Well” isn't exactly surprising, but it is still a massive achievement; Amidon and Muhly both deserve to have the sort of careers where years from now we'll scarcely be able to credit the two of them working together and it not being a big deal. Last time I said that Amidon had made the most interesting folk album of 2007; suddenly he's one of our most powerful chroniclers of the myriad varieties and shades of grace. All Is Well is viscerally stunning, comforting, upsetting, entrancing; as long as he can make art like this, Amidon can skip the formality of 'writing songs' forever.

________

from POPMATTERS.COM

Samamidon

All Is Well

(Bedroom Community)

by Ian Mathers

Rating 9/10

One of the odder pleasures available to the critic is that of reading your old work in the face of late-blooming love; those albums where, due to the unfortunate realities of time, we turn in the review before we really get what the music means to us. Scattered among all the pieces I’ve written elsewhere are a handful of positive but (it seems now) curiously restrained pieces, strange in retrospect because in the weeks and months afterwards I’d find myself turning to the work in question more often than I would have thought. It’s wonderful to have something new and bright smack you hard in the chest and change your world forever, but sometimes instead of that rush of love you kindle something more akin to a low-key friendship with the album, and by the time you notice you’ve been listening to practically nothing else for a few days the realisation is suffused with a pleasure no less real than the more emphatic kind.

I mention this in the context of Samamidon for two reasons: Their debut But This Chicken Proved Falsehearted is an excellent example of the phenomena, and in light of the 9 I’m giving his follow-up to it I want to make clear that I’ve been living with All Is Well for a significant time. The lexical confusion in that sentence is deliberate; Sam Amidon is the young man at least ostensibly responsible for the music on this disc, and Samamidon is the group that he leads and sings for. Last time Amidon was accompanied by his friend Thomas Bartlett (whose rather wonderful band Doveman Amidon also plays in) and this time Amidon decamped to Iceland to work with Bedroom Community and its founder, Björk collaborator Valgeir Sigurðsson. Whereas But This Chicken Proved Falsehearted is a charmingly deadpan, sparse work, this time Amidon is surrounded by the small but potent orchestra arranged by Nico Muhly (whose own resume is already rather ridiculous, and again features Björk).

cover art

* Amazon

Amidon thus far in his career has shown flawless taste in collaborators; both Bartlett and Muhly have had exquisitely tuned senses of how to surround his basic tracks with sounds and performances not just complimentary but relevatory. The horns, strings and piano on All Is Well don’t drown out Amidon’s guitar and banjo, and don’t just play along to the melody—they loom in and out of view, curl in the corners, provide a sense of space and movement to the music nearly unknown in any of Samamidon’s contemporaries. The highlight of the album, and clearest example of what a stunning job Muhly and Amidon’s other collaborators have done, is quasi-single “Saro”—like everything else here, an adaptation of an old traditional folk song. Amidon reharmonized all of the songs he chose, and I can’t track down any other version that comes close to the delicate power of Samamidon’s version. It’s a song about leaving someone behind, from an age where you couldn’t just fly back or call or email them, and like most of his adaptations it’s both historically distant and painfully relevant. The softly interlocking horns and lilting flute on the verse are gorgeous, the strings on the chorus lift the whole song up, and then when the horns come back…

I’ve had four or five months to try and figure out how to express what “Saro” sounds like in words, and I haven’t come close. It’s the apotheosis of All Is Well, but far from the only worthwhile moment. “Wild Bill Jones” (with Sam’s brother Stefan on drums) highlights how strikingly Amidon’s performance interacts with the subject matter of the traditional songs he’s chosen. It’s a murder ballad turned inside out; our narrator comes across Wild Bill Jones talking to the girl the narrator loves. He tells Wild Bill to leave her alone, Wild Bill refuses, and the narrator shoots the boy dead. “He rambled and he scrambled all along the ground / And he let out a dreadful moan / He looked in the face of his darling true love / Saying, ‘Honey, you are left all alone’”. Amidon’s mournful tone even when speaking for the boastful, bloodthirsty gunslinger and the track’s stately progression make grotesquely clear the meanness and pointlessness of the murder. This is strong stuff, and gorgeously wrought.

Given the trickster nature revealed by the shorts on his YouTube channel, I’m not sure what Amidon would make of the weight I would put on the emotional power of his performance of these songs, and I’m also surprised that All Is Well retains consistently such sober, clear-eyed power. Maybe that part of his personality comes out in the range of affect throughout: the children’s clapping song “Little Johnny Brown” is turned into mood music for the world’s most oblique alien abduction scene (complete with feedback squeaks), “Wedding Dress” with its horns parping past like telephone poles on the highway is the most exuberant song I’ve ever heard about sewing, and even those tired of it thanks to Oh Brother Where Art Thou should find a place in their heart for the trembling, heartsick version of “O Death” found here.

And that’s not even getting into the note that “All Is Well” itself sends the album out on. A song about embracing death with joy, it’s an endless escalation that ought to be disturbing and moving to materialists and believers in an afterlife alike. Wth just Amidon and Muhly’s piano it’s already beautiful, but as the horns and strings enter when Amidon repeats the title, it’s almost unbearable. I can’t imagine actually playing it at a funeral—it’s a little too on the nose, too devastating in its wonder. Samamidon has worked several different wonders with All Is Well—giving these beautiful old songs new life, drastically transforming the music of Samamidon without losing any of the power of their debut, providing in 48 short minutes life, death, love, romance, murder, forgiveness, anguish, hope, loss and magic. I thought by now the album might have settled for me into ‘just music’ as so many loved albums do, but I still get chills when I listen to it. Amidon is still young; I await his next move with wonder and a little trepidation.

________

From LOST AT SEA

Sam Amidon -All Is Well

Bedroom Community

Rating: 9.3/10

March 11, 2008

There are paintings, on the walls of caves, in Lascaux, France, which are said to be 16,000 years old. After visiting the paintings, Pablo Picasso asserted that, after millennia of evolution and centuries of ever-changing periods and techniques, "we have invented nothing." With the most primitive tools imaginable, some of our earliest ancestors found a way to express what it feels like to be alive. The Lascaux paintings represent the purest form of art, a means of communication created in the hopes of displaying honesty and without concern for personal recognition. Millennia later, in the realm of popular music, such a notion is pretty much deceased.

By their nature, artists, producers and record labels attempt to manufacture a product that will be embraced either critically or commercially, which requires a certain amount of self-promotion to succeed, and as a result sacrifices at least a portion of the purity of their ambition. I don't say this to belittle the achievements of the great musicians of our time, as I myself have dedicated a sizable portion of my life and finances to loving and supporting popular artists that deserved it. But there was a time when nothing could be recorded or sold, and it was only in the creation of a powerful and simple melody with words to match that a piece of an artist was awarded the chance to escape being trivial and temporary.

This artistic contract with immortality might explain the eerie suspicion that ghosts are about when All Is Well is playing. As a result of Sam Amidon's calm, inexpressive vocal delivery, he seems to act as a vessel for a thousand faceless men and women -- lost, in love, murdered and starving in their own time. Amidon's unique hold on the cannon of traditional songs offered in All Is Well compliments perfectly the string arrangements of Nico Muhly, which are almost heartbreakingly gorgeous. Muhly's performance stands out especially in the sprightly grace of "Wedding Dress," and in the album's effortlessly sublime centerpiece, "Saro." Valgeir Sigurdsson's production succeeds in allowing All Is Well to sound irretrievably distant, existing outside of any given space or time, adding up to a work that is far greater than any one man or group of people creating it; an exorcism for being forgotten every time it is played.

There is a story to be told for each of the songs presented in this collection, either of desperate hope in love ("Sugar Baby"), of jealousy's murdering clutches ("Wild Bill Jones"), or of being unable to let go of what life could have been ("O Death"). By the moment "Saro" begins, there is the feeling that Sam Amidon is not singing for himself, but rather in obligation to those who came before him. I don't know that such was Amidon's intent, and I am doubtful that even he knows exactly what he has accomplished here. Perhaps it is the unassuming, reserved approach to this recording that allows it to be as magnificent as it is. I'll admit to being nervous in recognizing All Is Well as a record that is pretty much a perfect storm, but every time Amidon's voice echoes beneath a chorus of violins, simultaneously grand and understated, it becomes more impossible to deny that the sound is something truly special. All Is Well is not music; it is as pure as the tune your mother hummed the first time she saw your face, and almost anything else is corrupt and forged in comparison.

Reviewed by Dave Toropov

___________

From musiquemachine.com

Sam Amidon - All is Well [Bedroom Community - 2007]

Samamidon Second album this year and third in all is once more an unique mix of country meets folk meets pop music, but it finds them enlarging their musical backing & sound  textures making a  denser & layered collection of tracks, from the often stripped down song craft of the past.

Brass  & wind swoons drift, string melody soar and sail  over and around the tracks emphasizing there beautiful harmonic grace, there are also slight programmed percussive elements and electronics  though they never take away from the music honest earthiness. Along with   viola, harmonium, Glockenspiel and piano which all of course join their base instruments of Banjo, Acoustic and electric guitar, and fiddle.

All the songs here are based on traditional old folk songs  but very much painted in the distinctive Samamidon brush stokes and of course with the new epic and grand perspective on songcaft, though the tracks never become too crowded or lose sight of their emotional grounding and honest melodic richness.  Sam’s instant recognisable seem more polished and rich here too, really soaring to the heavens with the strings, brass or winds- or emotional dwelling over picked acoustics.

There also seems darker and more melancholy tone present here too, little of the project fun and quirky edges remain - this feels and older, more grown up and sophisticated work. It’s amazing really how much the band have changed and matured at such a fast rate. A soaring and beautiful butterfly of an album, rich with tuneful wonder and epic song craft.

Rating: 5 out of 5

________

Single Review from PAPERTHIN WALLS

Wednesday, November 28th, 2007

Sam Amidon calls New York City home and has spent time playing in the likes of Doveman and Stars Like Fleas. His cohorts on All Is Well include composers Eyvind Kang and Nico Muhly, and the album itself was recorded in Iceland by Björk associate Valgeir Sigurðsson. Second album All Is Well happens, despite its avant-garde pedigree, to be a collection of folk songs—a fact that makes more sense when you glance at Amidon’s website and realize the man’s experience with traditional music runs deep. It doesn’t hurt that his voice falls somewhere between those of Ralph Stanley and Damien Jurado, or that Muhly’s orchestrations find the balance between sparse resonance and raw emotion. The narrator of this traditional song describes coming to this country and leaving the woman he loves behind, eventually settling into a lament. The vocals on Amidon’s version seem offhand at first, but on closer inspection reveal a depth, a subtle way of infusing specific lines with a resigned emotional power—his sense of devotion and regret emerges and endures.

A folk song is malleable. The lyrics, the characters, the story can shift from telling to telling. Pull out your copy of folk writing anthology The Rose And The Briar, or Nick Cave’s Murder Ballads; listen to Lambchop’s take on “The Butcher Boy” beside Damien Jurado’s. In the right hands, a song a century or more in vintage can sound as relevant as one written yesterday; that which is universal about it, that which has survived can be brought to the fore. “Saro” exists in a number of variations: in some, the story begins in 1849; in others, 1749. Some exist as the stripped-down lament presented here, with love and longing considered in a more abstract form; in others, it’s poverty that’s sent the narrator across the ocean and left him bereft. Amidon’s take on “Saro” sounds both timeless and current; presented here as a three-minute dirge, it hits one mournful note that then blossoms into a dozen variations. “I wish I was a poet,” Amidon sings halfway through; and though you believe him, sometimes it’s enough just to know the right way to say the words.

rating 9/10

- TOBIAS CARROLL

________

from TOUCHING EXTREMES

SAM AMIDON - All is well (Bedroom Community )

You, yes you. Lovers of Jim O'Rourke's circa "Bad timing" and Van Dyke Parks (…right, Joanna Newsom's recent work with him too), there is something here that needs your credit card. One can't believe how beautiful this album is: for sure it belongs in 2007's top ten. And I had never heard of this man from Vermont before. Described as a "child of folk musicians", Sam Amidon - who's active in fringe indie-rock bands Doveman and Stars Like Fleas in the meantime - is gifted with an "improbably nice" voice: the same monotonous timbre always, no virtuosity, a detached "who cares?" attitude if you will. Yet it sounds, for want of a better word, "warm". My wife, whose competence as an accomplished songwriter allows her to speak better than myself in this case, found a parallelism with elements of native Indian origin in Sam's expression. Matter of factly, that voice is just perfect for these tunes, which are nothing but rearranged renditions of popular American favourites, such as "O Death", "Sugar Baby" and "Wild Bill Jones". The flawless combination of Amidon's interpretation (his guitar strumming is also pretty peculiar, and it doesn't hurt at all) with Nico Muhly's sensitive wind, brass and strings arrangements (listen to those bass lines, and what about the fantastic Irish pipes appearing from nowhere in "Fall on my knees"?) yields repeated moments of unadulterated emotional rapture. All this, let me stress it once again, through simple songs which do not appear so simple after the treatment. Participants include Ben Frost, Eyvind Kang, Aaron Siegel, Morse and Valgeir Sigurðsson, producer of the artifact and once again confirming himself to be one of the most open-eared talents in that no man's land between experimental and potentially market-gratifying music. A veritable classic, a standard for comparisons in this genre from now on. Not to be missed.

________

From FOXY DIGITALIS

 

Sam Amidon "All is Well"

Bedroom Community

 

The songs on "All is Well," Sam Amidon’s second album, are – as those on his 2007 debut “But this Chicken proved false hearted” – based on traditional tunes; yet instead of making this an occasion to connect to (supposedly) authentic forms of music or to stage the unearthing of musical roots, Amidon, his collaborator Nico Muhly and the producer Valgeir Sigurðsson take a clever turn by adding a slightly artificial quality to the arrangements. This artificiality is of a subtle, sophisticated kind, though, and Amidon doesn’t seem to be concerned with the notion of creating ostensibly ‘inauthentic’ music (as, say, The Flying Lizards’ “Top Ten” album) at all. There is not only warmth, but actually a strong lyrical and emotional dimension to the music, yet at the same time it always stays a little reserved, neither trying itself at large expressive gestures nor at evocations of intimacy.

Guitar and voice form the basis of the songs, which are completed with delicate wind, brass and string arrangements and some carefully integrated electronics, a hushed rhythm here or an ephemeral detail there. These additional elements suggest a vaguely cinematic atmosphere and just as in a good movie they introduce a notion of drama without being pathetic. In fact, it seems that it is this particular atmosphere that most appropriately marks the sensibilities that unfold with the changing moods and tempers of the album’s ten songs. And when Amidon sings the short line “All is Well” in the closing piece, slowly repeating the words over and over again, I almost want to believe him, at least until I realize that the song is over and I have to get up to put a new disc in the player. 7/10 -- 

Magnus Schaefer (19 February, 2008)