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Cruising in my car, I was putting my thoughts together about the latest release from the Sam Roberts Band, Collider. About a mile from my house, a Bob Dylan song came on the radio… Bingo! The Sam Roberts band has a touch of Dylan to them. That is certainly evident in the opening track of the CD, “The Last Crusade.” Surely, it’s a similar sound to the later years of Dylan’s recordings.
The band, which grooves really nicely on this CD deserves to be known. Their lineup is: Sam Roberts as lead singer and on guitar, Dave Nugent on lead guitar, Eric Fares on keyboard and guitar, Josh Trager on drums, and James Hall on bass. For this current CD release, Roberts changed from using his name to using the Sam Roberts Band.
Beyond the obvious Dylan sound, one can hear Tom Petty, as well as a touch of McCartney.
Well-crafted pop/rock tunes populate Collider. It sounds upbeat, but therein lies the irony in some respect, when contrasting the bouncy music to the lyrics, in which some heartache is evident. Some examples are, from the CD’s fifth track, “No Arrows”:
“Some days it’s hard to give her
What she needs I can’t deliver.”
From “Twist the Knife”:
“I hear you knockin’ on the door
But you ain’t never comin’ in, no, no, no
to the house no more
Cause it ain’t like
It ain’t like it was before.”
If I had to describe the overall feeling I get from listening to the CD, it would be “bittersweet.”
The music hooks you; in fact, it grabs you by the neck and pulls you in. You become immersed in the catchy beats, melodies, and guitar chords. It just doesn’t let you go!
The lyrics that this Canadian-born singer has penned are words we all wish we could have thought of to describe those moments in our lives when we come to realize that relationships are on the rocks, or when we reflect back on the ones we can’t get out of our hearts but know we can’t go back there again.
This music should wind up as a part of a soundtrack for one of those Hollywood movies featuring a love triangle. You know, he loves her but she loves somebody else..and on and on. You ever been there? Sure you have; that’s why you’ll love Collider and the wonderfully crafted songs of Roberts. He is surely a wordsmith in the highest degree.
