Sam Baker - pretty world
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Free Music Notes for pretty world
Free Music Review: Best of 2007?
Hit: 5 Stars
I bought this CD on the somebody elses recommendation and to be honest usually doesn't work well for me. I was very surprised. This CD is categorized as country but it is more like an alternative folk.
Sam Baker is quite a poet. The topic of his music is very approachable and relevant to the average person. I think some people may be turned off by his voice that isn't pretty. Think of something between Tom Waits and Bob Dylan.
The music is minimal allowing concentration on his exceptional song writing. There is not a bad track on this disc. Even Days which is done in Spanish is so pleasing that you kind of forget that it's not in English. My favorites are Boxes and Juarez.
This has been a largely overlook CD that I truly believe deserves both critical and popular recognition. Buy this CD. You won't be dissapointed. Even my 16 year old daughter loves it.
Free Music Review: 'pretty world' is pretty impressive
Hit: 5 Stars
Sam Baker's second CD, 'pretty world' is an excellent followup to 'Mercy'. This guy has a raw delivery and edits his pieces down to the essence without a wasted word. He is a remarkable songwriter.Free Music Review: Superb
Hit: 5 Stars
Baker was riding a train to Machu Picchu in Peru in 1986 when a backpack bomb hidden in the compartment over his head exploded. Seven people died. Baker almost made it eight. The blast destroyed part of his left shoulder, severed the femoral artery in his left leg, punctured his eardrums, and mangled his left (fretting) hand. It took him years to recover. As he did, Baker, who had worked as a boatman and a carpenter, turned to poetry. Eventually, he began playing live, strumming guitar lefthanded.
He's not much of a vocalist, but he's an expressive singer, using emphasis and timing to make the most of a craggy croak that immediately brings to mind John Prine.
Like Prine, Van Zandt and Lucinda Williams, he's a superb storyteller with an economical and effective style. So effective that he doesn't need choruses on all the songs on "Pretty World," his second disc, to draw you into the rhythm. On a couple of cuts, he uses standards -- Stephen Foster's "Hard Times Come Again No More" and "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" -- as preludes and his words match up to the classics.
"Hard Times" opens "Odessa," the tale of a boy who killed a girl rolling his Corvette. He inherits daddy's oil money, never learned to work and never forgot the girl. "He's an old man now; Lives on his dead daddy's place. Never took a wife; he is going to die without a trace. See he loved the girl who was penned in the Vette; Talks to her everyday. Her face was blood and diamonds; he remembers her that way."
The sound is spare with just enough framing from a backing band fronted by Walt Wilkins and augmented by guests including Lloyd Maines (Natalie's dad), Gurf Morlix and Fats Kaplin. Marcia Ramirez offers counterpoint vocals on several cuts.
While songs like the opening "Juarez (A Song to Himself)," "Orphan" and "Slots" are gritty tales about down and outers, there's also a sweetness to Baker. The title cut reflects on the opening of a day, before the sun, before the heat and "before dreams are lost like midnight pearls." "Sweetly Undone" is achingly beautiful. "I watch you at the pool, slowly undress. Spread your towel on St. Agustine, lay down and rest, lay down and rest. Lay down with your top, sweetly undone."
Baker's phrasing in that song is perfect, affecting, brilliant. But then this is a brilliant disc, the best singer/songwriter offering of the year. Baker writes about our fleeting lives in a way rarely heard in popular music with a gift for metaphor and phrasing that resonates long after the final chord.
Free Music Review: A rare talent
Hit: 5 Stars
I had never heard of Sam Baker until I was surfing My Space and came across his page. I listened to a few bars of one of the songs from his first cd Mercy, which I have also ordered. This guy is amazing. His haunting melodies, and unique vocal stylings that are a mixture of talk and melody just stick with you. They hit your soul.
There is not a bad cut in the pack and Odesssa, Slots, and Juarez will stick with me like glue. Boxes brought me to tears, and the title cut settled me on an uneasy night. Broken Fingers left me with questions? What a gift to find a new artist I can embrace. Thank you Sam.
Free Music Review: Pretty indeed ....
Hit: 5 Stars
Sam Baker's second album keeps what the first one promised : here is a great new singer/songwriter and a new star in contemporary songs .
What a talent ! Go and get it , they don't come better !
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