SAM FENDER'S SONGS ARE LYRICAL, LITERATE, AND SOCIALLY CONSCIOUS

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This past winter, as the winds howled and the snow lay thick on the quiet streets, Sam Fender strummed and sang the night away in a packed, grungy warehouse in North London. His total mastery over his voice was immediately and strikingly apparent. Smooth and soulful, it sliced through any instrument or sound it came up against, cleanly swinging and tugging each song in an unexpected direction. Beyond the power of his live performance, it was the level of craft evident in the 22-year-old’s tracks that suggested a musician to keep on the radar.

Since being longlisted for the BBC Sound of 2018 list early this year, Fender and his touring band of “brothers,” as he calls them, have been storming through the British Isles and much of Europe playing live. Originally from North Shields near Newcastle in England, Fender puts his rise down to “a complete stroke of luck,” pointing out the sad truth that “a lot of great, talented people get trapped in towns that get overlooked. The industry is always in London or Manchester. It’s always in the main cities and if you’re in a fishing town thirteen miles outside of Newcastle, there’s not much going down.”

This barrier makes Fender’s escape all the more impressive. He met his manager when he was eighteen in a bar where he worked and it all unraveled from there. Coming from a family of talented performers, Fender sees what he’s doing as essentially the same as what his father and brother, who were also musicians before him, have done—even if the outcomes have been different. “No one was looking for it,” he explains. “We all just love music. We haven’t got some warped idea of what success is or anything. We would have been doing it anyway, regardless of what happens.”

Having grown up surrounded by music, Fender’s upbringing has powerfully enriched his musical knowledge and his style as an artist. “My dad is a musician. He’s a pianist, guitarist, a singer—a really, really good singer,” he explains. “He used to play back in the old club scenes.” The elder Fender used to cover the likes of Huey Lewis and the News and classic Seventies “cheesy bangers,” which suggests where his son’s sense of performance and vocal power come from. The music didn’t cease at home either: “Whenever we used to have family round, the pianos and the guitars would always come out and everyone would be singing old soul tunes. Otis Redding was a big one in our family. Being surrounded by that, I’m eternally grateful.” Going into music professionally might have seemed an inevitability for Sam, but that didn’t make it any easier to announce his decision to them. “Actually, I think it made it worse,” he admits, “because my brother is a singer/songwriter and he’s been through the trials and tribulations.”

Alongside those older classics, Fender has been on his own personal exploration of late, drawing on more modern, but just as potent, influences such as Jeff Buckley and Bruce Springsteen. “Recently, I’ve been listening to loads of Kendrick Lamar,” he adds. “I always go back to the To Pimp a Butterfly album—it’s just insane. Within the indie world, Alex Turner—you can’t not love him. One day I’m listening to like Arcade Fire, The Suburbs and their new album and pretty much everything that they’ve ever done, and then I’m listening to like Joni Mitchell.”

This broad rainbow of genres has helped shape Fender’s style. His music blossoms when it’s at its most feisty or at its most melancholic, when one can sense that he truly believes in what he’s playing. The standout track from his repertoire is “Play God,” which opens with a single muted guitar note before the lyrics cut through: “You were cracking all your fingers, with your eyes fixed to the floor.” Then the bass and drums come rolling in like thunder, bolstering and filling out the treble-heavy introduction. In the chorus, the vocal melody soars far above the instruments, almost in an attempt to embody the title of the track.

For a song to be worthy of longevity, poignant lyrics that elicit some sort of reaction are integral. A far cry from the repeating, shouted drivel that drives much of pop music today, Fender’s writing is powerfully political and brims with social awareness. He drew inspiration from George Orwell’s 1984 for the surveillance-tinged lyrics of “Play God.” “I think at the time there was just a lot going on,” he recalls of the period when he wrote it. “There were loads of protests in the street in Newcastle for not bombing Syria and there was all of this stuff that was coming out with the phone tapping. It was just a very Orwellian time.” Another song, “Millennial,” is self-deprecating and yet resistant to the over-zealous criticisms that are used to describe his generation, placing the onus on the people who have gone before. The track “Greasy Spoon” opens on a traditional breakfast cafe and progresses into stark references to the ubiquitous misogyny which still plagues society, with the final chorus movingly and jarringly singing out, “I am a woman, I am your daughter, I am your mother.” Despite these poignant and potent addresses to society, like most artists, first and foremost Fender just wants to be a musician. “I never ever wanted to be a political force,” he explains. “I just want to be an observer and someone who lightly points things out. If people connect to it, then great. I’m just pointing out shit that everybody sees.”

Perhaps it requires a wide vantage point for observation and a long period of time for lonely reflection to create the opportunities to shape such grand and powerful concepts. “I write loads of songs on flights. I think it’s because I’ve got this slight fear that the plane is going to go down at any time,” he admits. “I get this urge to get some good work done before I go down. You can’t go on Instagram and get distracted, so it’s two hours of actually having to sit down and do something where there’s nothing pinging. I’m shamelessly addicted.”

Off the plane and back in North London, the band leaves the stage and a keyboard is haphazardly carted on. Fender sets himself up for his last song. The crowd goes silent and then he begins. His voice is impeccable, the crowd fixated. He thanks everyone, wishes them a good night, and darts through the crowd and out the door, leaving nothing but an air of wonderment to settle. Among the brilliant then-unreleased songs he performed that night were “Leave Fast” and “Dead Boys,” both referencing a real psychological fissure between his nostalgic connection to home and the recognition of the existential limitations of a small town. The DJ Annie Mac named the latter her “Hottest Record in the World” for the week when she premiered it on her BBC Radio One show earlier this month, continuing the exponentially improving trajectory of his career.

The future for Fender seems as nonchalant and easy-flowing as the way he speaks. “I think we might do an EP and then maybe go towards an album,” he muses. “It depends. We’re just kind of cruising. We’re doing everything ourselves and we haven’t signed to anybody.” Like the many other unsigned musicians who have achieved notoriety in recent years, Fender is proving that, with a good manager, the democratic nature of the internet and the access of social media can replace a million-dollar record deal.

Perhaps most importantly, Fender seems like a musician who, however serious his songs may be, will never lose his sense of humor. When discussing how he spends his time when not on tour, one of his band members teases him about the studio he’s been building. “Well, I haven’t really been doing that,” Fender laughs. Someone else chimes in, “I was going to say he hasn’t fucking done anything!” After the chatter dies down, Fender goes on to explain their recording setup. “It’s an old Ministry of Transport garage that we’ve just acquired on a fishing quay and right next to my local boozer,” he laughs. “It’s going be the death of us because we’ll probably have a great album or a total shit one.” Judging by his performances, his rich musical rooting, and his sheer talent as a pianist, guitarist, and vocalist, the latter prediction seems unlikely.

Sam Fender performs at the Reading Festival this Sunday.