A Remote View – Sambassadeur
I Can Try – Sambassadeur
Long time, no posting – it’s been a busy summer. And honestly, time is looking like it’s going to stay relatively compressed for a while. But I’ll try to knock out a quick post now and then. Mostly I’ll try to catch up on all the good music that’s come out this year.
I listened to the new record from Sambassadeur – one of best of the many great bands currently coming out of Labrador Records – right around New Years, and it’s been a pretty constant presence for the whole year. After a couple great records in a row, they’re slowly scaling their way up onto my list of sure-things. European isn’t the best album of the year – but it’s not far off.
On your first listen, the big and bright tracks will stand out. While there’s nothing that leaps out at you like their very best work, songs like “Stranded,” “Days,” and “I Can Try” open things up with a deadly combination of an effervescent movement, strings out of the 60s, and that lovely Swedish lilt. The only real downside is a bleeding together of sound and approach. As good as “I Can Try” sounds, it’s hard to deny that it sounds a tad less sparkly when dropped in the midst of such similar fare.
“Forward is All” seems like a recognition of that problem – slowing things down a bit in an effort to alter the pace of the record. Unfortunately, while it’s nice enough, the downgrade in energy leaves it incapable of fully grabbing you.
Far more effective is the duo of tracks that serve as a bridge between the slightly dull middle and the shining finale. It is perhaps a bad sign for a record when it’s transitionary material is the best thing on offer–but in this case the B-material is still so good that you can’t really find too much fault.
Instead, you just have the chance to experience the quiet majesty of “High and Low” and (especially) “A Remove View.” The former is as beautiful as any of their tracks but carries with it a dark undertone. It’s insistent but gentle – like the breeze blowing off the ocean just after the sun has set, but before the cool of the night has set in.
The real magic is in the second of these tracks, though. “A Remote View” clocks in at just barely over two minutes, is fully instrumental, and may be the most pure song I’ve heard in years. Gentle acoustic guitars plucked with care, and a sense of fragile possibility. It’s the sound of falling in love, of knowing that you have to say goodbye, of the sense that you just might not be strong enough. “A Remote View” sounds to me like the bookends on a 50 year relationship. It’s the time right before: the aching that comes from wanting to touch something more, but never being sure that it will be safe. It’s also the time after everything is over: when you look back and shed bittersweet tears.
The beauty of the song is that it’s so antithetical to what you normally get from the bad. If the general feeling conveyed by a Sambassadeuer song is usually movement, this is a song about moments captured in amber. It’s a perfect counterpoint – and it’s what makes this a great, rather than just a very good, record.