Sam Roberts Band

July 30, 2008

Opening Act: Hymns 

"There must be something in the air."    

Sam Roberts sings these words just before the first song on his first full-length album fades out into ether, conjuring that moment you experience every night in bed when your conscience shuts down in anticipation of the dreamlike delights to come. Sam Roberts may call Montreal home, but his music occupies a less definable space: the place between studious intellect and gut reaction; between psychedelic transcendence and the cold, hard truth; between fist-pumped, hockey-lovin' hellraising and melancholic vulnerability. Or, in Sam's universe, it's the place where Rue St-Laurent intersects with Abbey Road.        

His 2002 breakthrough EP, The Inhuman Condition (50,000 copies sold and certified GOLD in Canada and still cha-chinging), was a heaven-sent prophecy from the classic-pop gods translated into street-level terms. While there was no denying Sam's way with ultra-addictive melody, he also displayed astonishing breadth in just six tracks, from knockout power-pop punches ("Don't Walk Away Eileen") and moody folk mysticism ("Brother Down," the official soundtrack of summer 2002) to extended psych-pop jams ("Where Have All the Good People Gone?") and middle-finger-waving rockers ("This is How I Live").

For those of us seeking something real amid the boob-jobbed divas and brow-pierced bohunks cluttering the musical landscape, Sam was almost too good to be true: an uncompromising, no-B.S. rock purist who could hold his own on the charts, and who'd absorbed the most important lessons of music history and updated them with a renewed sense of urgency for the here and now. 

Visit the Sam Roberts Band online at http://www.samrobertsband.com/