Transmissions

Amos Lee spent the years just prior to 2024s Transmissions exploring the work of his influences, including the lyrical west coast jazz of 50s icon Chet Baker and the poetic Americana of Lucinda Williams. He seemingly brings all of this experience to bear here, striking an assured balance between ragged folk intimacy and gorgeously arranged Baroque pop. It was produced by Lee and largely recorded live over a one-week period in upstate New York. The result is an album that illuminates all of the raw emotionality and literate qualities of the singer/songwriters best work, but with a broad musicality that feels ambitious, even as it remains loose and never overly planned out. Like a good director, Lee seems to have thought hard about all the details he wanted to capture, working things out with his band ahead of time so he didnt have to work too hard and just settle into the moment once the tape started rolling. The album opens in deceptively low-key fashion with "Built to Fall," a literate, Bob Dylan-esque song that starts with a spare piano and vocal passage before pushing outwards with a haunting backing vocal and string orchestration. Piano figures heavily throughout Transmissions, as on the rustic gospel number "Carry On," where Lee sings delicate harmonies against a spiraling keyboard arpeggio and banjo and pedal steel accents. There are other bold creative moves here, as on the 70s glitter-rock-esque ballad "Madison," where he coos in falsetto, evoking a striking blend of Harry Nilsson and David Bowie. Artful still are the gorgeously breezy and straightforward country and folk-rock of "Darkest Places" and "Hold Tight," anthems that underscore the long-simmering the Band and Neil Young influences running through his work. They are also songs that find Lee continuing to juxtapose his own regret and longing with a wider, more universal emotional palette, one imbued with poetic imagery that sticks with you. On "Darkest Places," he paints a picture of an artist at loose ends in a society teetering on collapse. He sings, "Ive been looking out for letters and waiting for a stranger to come knock me out/Ive been wanderin around like a man/Fought in a war he knows never would be won/Like an empty Budweiser bottle in the window glowin in the sun." With Transmissions, Lee has made an album thats both cozy and daring, one that reaches for connection and pulls you deep into it. ~ Matt Collar

ニュージャージー州の田舎町、マールボロでバンド・メンバーと合宿しながら作ったという通算11枚目。愛をテーマに人生の尊さを描いた楽曲が並び、寄せては返す波の音のようなピアノのトリルが印象的な"Built To Fall"をはじめ、ハッと息を呑む美しい瞬間がそこかしこに登場。歌の深部へとゆっくり潜行していくようなエイモスの歌声もただただ聴き惚れるばかりだ。
bounce (C)桑原シロー