A new spin on some classics that never loses the heart or roots of the originals.
Sam Amidon is a busy man: when he’s not covering Bon Iver’s “Sable” EP in full at its London launch at Justin Vernon’s own request, he’s off coaching award season heavyweight actors Josh O’Connor and Paul Mescal on how to sing for their forthcoming film, or he’s collaborating with choreographer Michael Keegan Dolan on his new stage work “Nobodaddy”. So, it would be reasonable to think that he’s decided to put out “Salt River”, a collection of covers and reimagined traditional folk songs, partly for the ease of the thing, but for the Vermont-born, London based, singer-songwriter, this is far more than a simple covers album. With “Salt River”, Amidon teamed with saxophonist and producer Sam Gendel to finally realise part of a decades-long quest to reframe just what it means to sing folk songs and make folk music.
As openings go, Amidon’s take on the instrumental ‘Oldenfjord’, originally by Grey Larsen, is nothing flashy, but it’s quietly captivating and shows how Amidon is unashamed about embracing a traditional folk sound, and he embraces it just as enthusiastically on the traditional hymn ‘Three Five’ before switching gears with a Lou Reed cover. “Big sky, holding up the stars / Big sky, holding Venus and Mars / Big sky, catch you in a jar / But it can’t hold us down anymore,” Amidon sings gently against the dull melody of a synthesizer on his take on Reed’s ‘Big Sky’; even with the synth, it’s clearly roots music in nature, a departure from the bombastic, punk spirit of the original, but it adds a layer of mysticism, making the song feel less blindly hopeful and more questioning for the future.
The aforementioned synthesizer pops up again on ‘Tavern’, an instrumental piece composed by Amidon and Gendel that incorporates the album’s namesake traditional American fiddle tune, but this time the synth gives a more expected 80s sound before it’s mixed smoothly with violin and then transitions into something resembling off-beat jazz when a saxophone is added in. ‘Golden Willow Tree’ is a sprawling traditional seven and half minute tale of maritime strife as a captain, having trouble with his ship, turns to a cabin boy for help, only to betray him and refuse to save him once the boy has done what was asked of him. ‘On My Journey Home’ finds Amidon looking towards the Promised Land as he echoes the traditional “I’m bound for Canaan’s land to see” against a rearrangement of the original 1859 composition.
The two-minute ‘Ask the Elephant’, a reimagining of a Yoko Ono song, feels like an interlude to rest and recharge, giving us time to take stock and as Amidon goes spoken word and gives us philosophical questions and answers like, “Ask the elephant, why are you so big? / You’re small. I just look big to you.” A take on Ornette Coleman’s ‘Friends and Neighbours’ has a sweet, naive hopefulness about it that’s only enhanced by the lo-fi production style.
“This album is a campfire, but the campfire is around Sam Gendel’s synthesizer,” said Amidon about the making of “Salt River”, a sentence that sums up neatly how he managed to take things that were mostly born long before he was and turn them into something of his own without losing any of their warmth or meaning. Folk music has resonated strongly in hearts and minds for centuries, and if “Salt River” is anything to go by, with Amidon’s continued help the future looks bright for it to keep on doing so for many more.