A Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter with a kind of rambling, melancholic grace,
Sam Burton makes his album debut with
I Can Go with You, an 11-song set of yawning country-folk missives that recalls an earlier era without coming off as overtly retro. Growing up in Salt Lake City, he taught himself guitar as a teenager, graduating from indie rock and shoegaze into a more sparse, bedroom folk style. His haunting homemade tapes for the Chthonic label established him as a critical darling of the D.I.Y. cassette scene, and by the time
Burton moved to L.A., he'd landed a deal with esteemed Bay Area indie Tompkins Square. Moving away from his lo-fi roots, he and producer
Jarvis Taveniere (
Woods,
Purple Mountains) have created a rich experience, fitting his introspective songwriting with low-key full-band arrangements, subtle string adornments, and a pleasingly organic feel that suits his music well. On highlights like "Further from the Known" and "I Am No Moon," he somewhat recalls the mid-2000s work of English crooner
Richard Hawley, imbuing shades of pastoral country and early rock with a touch of class that helps them seem more timeless. Sung in an easygoing baritone,
Burton's uniformly mid- to slow-tempo ballads have a sort of windblown dignity to them, not unlike
Leonard Cohen's early albums where loneliness wore a bespoke suit and mourned lost loves from cheap hotel rooms. It's a loosely specific tone that many have tried for, but few manage to convey with any real conviction. That
Burton got there on his first album is an impressive feat, but it's the high quality of his songwriting that makes the production and overall aesthetic stand up so well.