Sam Roberts Band: Collider

I first heard Sam Roberts on the radio nearly 10 years ago. When I first heard his debut single, "Brother Down," I thought he was more of a hip hop crossover artist. Chalk that up to my young mind's confusion but there was also not as much frame of reference for Roberts' brand of rhythmic delivery. Rhythm, whether an insistent boogie or a laid-back groove, is the backbone of this album, the vehicle from which Roberts delivers his sermonlike tunes. Few of the songs are hooky in a conventional way -- a quality that initially kept me from wanting to revisit it -- but while it's playing you'll find yourself tapping along, and then finally uncovering the wit and poetry of the lyrics. By now of course there wouldn't be any confusing Roberts for an MC, but this is definitely the sound of a singer-songwriter in a post-hiphop world.

Roberts has an old soul, and writes ably about unity and brotherhood, about commonality and understanding, about problems that plague all of us and the search for solutions. But he's observational, not preachy. Ultimately, it's also important to seek solutions for yourself: ("Don't forget where you came from / Don't forget who you are / They're all beating the same drum / You've been playin' guitar," from "Streets of Heaven (Promises Promises)") Community and individuality are of a whole in Robert's nuanced lyrical universe. And there is darkness, but there is also hope (the uncertain point of the great album-closer, "Tractor Beam Blues:" "Is love enough? Yes it is / Is hope enough? / I hope it is.")

Along the way he colours and shifts focus on the strange quirks of the world. It opens with some really great tracks. "The Last Crusade" is tense, feeling like a back against the wall. "Without a Map" is weary from running. "Let it In" is down and dirty, and "Graveyard Shift" is that moment when your exhaustion breaks and you get a second wind, when that mental block that kept you from solving that problem suddenly lifts and it all hits you, what you need to do. I love the end-of-the-rope lyrics of "No Arrows:" "Some days it's hard to give her / What she needs I can't deliver / Got no answers on my tongue, I / Got no arrows in my quiver."

Roberts could've been excused for taking all the credit for this album, but this is his first release credited to "Sam Roberts Band." He's very clearly the star, the leader, the preacher. Everything is in the service of his lyrics, and his lazy-lidded, world-weary vocal delivery is front and center. He's got a folkie's voice and a rocker's tool kit, a bit like Springsteen. The guitars are lush, helping the universalist sound achieve that warm-yet-cool feeling of floating free and occasionally being blinded by bright lights. It takes a stern-yet-spacey tone for the most part that is very enjoyable but not "accessible," so casual listeners might be put off; but put it on your shelf and come back when you have a moment to sit down with it, it'll impress. Sam is generous but right to credit the group as part of the process, they definitely make their contributions. Given what I said earlier about the album's rhythmic quality, the drums are the key ingredient beneath those space-borne guitars and horns.

Toward the end of the set comes the album's triumph, "I Feel You," which towers over all the other very-good-to-great songs, casting a shadow of awesomeness and acting as Roberts' most recent career highlight, with its squinching, fuzz-blasted, churning guitars, poetically obscure lyrics and dramatic chorus, Roberts outdoes any other song I've heard from him on this one, to the point where he namedrops Leonard Cohen and it feels totally deserved. In all it's a great summation of the difficult yet necessary act of understanding and being known -- of "Feeling" someone, or being felt.

I wouldn't say an album is great because the lyrics or the ideas behind them are great They need to be served by an enjoyable sense of musicianship, and that's Robert's strength. He's a songwriter above all else, and he has created some great ones on this piece. It's all material to work into lyrics, into metaphor and turn of phrase and some good choruses, backed by positively liquid instrumentation. He's astute enough to sense the troubles of the world and to put them down in words, but not arrogant enough to presume he knows the answers. And the music flows freely beneath all this, carrying it along on that wave of solidarity yet uncertainty.

Buy this album now: iTunes // Amazon.com // Amazon.ca