Album Review: Sam Fender - "Seventeen Going Under"

 

Sam Fender is one of those names I've heard in passing a few times but this is my first actual encounter with his music. Hailing from North Shields, this is the 26-year-old's second album and has already followed its predecessor to the top of the charts. So no pressure here then.

The main artist Fender reminds me of on Seventeen Going Under is a Geordie version of the Gaslight Anthem - he has the same sort of warts 'n' all tales of growing up in a less than salubrious area that Brian Fallon used to do so well a decade or so ago as evidenced on the opening title track ("Fist fights on the beach, the bizzies round us up, do it all again next week"). It's not the be all and end all of his repertoire though - Aye is an angry state of the world address ("They watched Jackie pick up Kennedy's head/They watched kids go to Epstein's bed") which builds slowly to a sheer explosion of foul-mouthed anger on the outro.

There's a bit of a modern day Manics influence on here as well - certainly there's similarities between Fender's voice and that of James Dean Bradfield but the soaring guitars of Get You Down and the gentle almost trip-hop style rhythms of Last To Make It Home definitely recall Blackwood's finest. At the other end of the scale, the tender ode to staying true to yourself Mantra and the stripped back closer The Dying Light show his lyrics at their most stark and honest.

It would have been easy to be cynical about this album but I'm happy to say that this is one of the times where hype and sales are justified - Sam Fender is a guy with an ear for a thought-provoking lyric and a big skyscraping chorus and that's not an easy trick to pull off. Bruised but defiant, Seventeen Going Under is an album that bears up well to repeated listening with the often dark and personal lyrics and is well worth your investigation.

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NITE SONGS RATING: 🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌑🌑 (8/10)

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