The title track of Samuel Wilbur’s fourth album, ‘The Age‘ appears, on first impressions, to be just another reflection on the passage of time, youth slipping away and an uncertain future tracing away for an unknowable distance. And so it is, but it certainly focuses in more sharply on the darker side of this equation – there’s less about growing and learning and finding your way in the world and more of “I am older now and so are my friends / Some have families, and some have wound up dead / It’s such a fragile existence that we live / You could wake up one day and everybody’s gone.” It’s the truth we often spend a lifetime pretending is not the case – in the end there’s less to life than yoga and Rom-Com dreams and a lot more of “Seems like yesterday I was turning seventeen / Nowadays I know that I am closer / I’m past half the age of the average life expectancy.”
How did Samuel Wilbur come to these realisations?
Well, the South Dakota born and Minneapolis based singer-songwriter is, he says, a high school social studies teacher by day, and rock star by night – a combination that surely invites a measure of insight. , Samuel Wilbur has been writing and recording his own music since he was 16 years old, and he uses his carefully crafted and melodically hooky music to subvert expectations – “this sounds light and pleasing” one might say and then “but it’s all about how dark and self-interested forces manipulate society to the detriment of the powerless”. Music to make one think, which is no bad thing.
The album ‘The Age‘ is released today, Samuel Wilbur recorded it in his home studio and then enlisted friends Bob Beahen, and Sam Hall to add drums, as well as vocals from six other Twin Cities based artists. “I wanted this album to be more collaborative and include more voices and artist’s perspectives and interpretations,” he says. The album was mixed and mastered by Fathom Lane’s Matt Patrick at the Library Recording Studio in Minneapolis
