Recognising him, the landlord persuaded Fender to play Davies his tunes. Part of Fender’s compelling origin story is how he was pulling pints in 2013, trying to get out of Whitley Bay, when Ben Howard’s manager, Owain Davies, walked in. His elder brother and father are also musicians, the kind who play pubs. Fender is from North Shields, where he still lives with his mum, a nurse. Intriguingly, the desire to leave rubs up against home-town pride with wry affection. “My old man told me, ‘leave fast or stay for ever’,” Fender projects. The desperate need to escape one’s home town – that Springsteen theme – plays out in Leave Fast, here played solo while guitarist Dean Thompson fixes his own effects rig. The musical forebear here is Bruce Springsteen, who Fender admits is his idol. In a white T-shirt and black jeans, all affable geordie manners between songs, and piercing stare while singing, Fender just plays it straight and pacy. One of the high points of this sold-out gig (he’s also sold out the bigger venue across the road, the Ritz, where he’s playing in May), Dead Boys finds Fender mourning the suicides of young men without any of the gurning at the piano that such themes usually prompt in most mainstream over-doers. Watch the video for Sam Fender’s Dead Boys. But in the tracks that have officially been out thus far – especially last year’s Dead Boys EP – he has shied away from romance to hymn his home town and its discontents in a compelling vibrato that distantly suggests Jeff Buckley.
Tonight’s gig seems to offer a tune or two about romantic yearning. Not writing love songs may fall away when Fender’s debut album arrives later this year. I’m not an expert on politics, but there’s a bunch of bad people at the top who care about lining their own pockets before creating a society that looks after the vulnerable.” The negative effects of greedy politicians have haunted the north-east for years, it’s very apparent. He recently told GQ that “pretty much every prime minister since I can remember has made me mad. Unlike them, however, he doesn’t write love songs. Like the many other singer-songwriters vying for a chunk of the everyman pound, Fender is inherently tuneful, even if he is channelling indie rock (sometimes trudgingly so tonight) rather than breezy guitar pop. Elton John FaceTimed him for a Beats 1 Radio chat.
Youtube tunesmith mac#
Having been shortlisted for the BBC Sound of 2018 award, the 24-year-old recently won the 2019 Brits critics’ choice award, beating Mahalia (too similar, perhaps, to Jorja Smith, 2018’s winner) and Lewis Capaldi (vanilla, even in an anodyne market).įender has all the up’n’coming artist credentials: an Annie Mac Hottest Record, sold-out tours, and a home-town headline slot at the Mouth of the Tyne festival in July that shifts 4,000 tickets within an hour. So it comes as no shock that one of the success stories of the past year is Sam Fender, a name that trips easily off the tongue, one syllable eliding into two more, just like the big boys.
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