Album Review: Sam Lewis - Everything's Fine

 

On his seventh studio album, Sam Lewis almost presses the reset button and heads back to the raw domain of the stripped back song. Across nine original lyrical compositions, the light shines inwards exposing the skeletal status of country-folk songwriting. EVERYTHING’S FINE eventually gets up to full complement with an instrumental and a cover to propel an album with nothing to hide and everything to gain. From this vulnerable position, Lewis draws upon immense writing chops presenting a package hooking in a listener for a rewarding thirty-plus minutes. 

Assigning John Prine as a comparison can be an exaggerated superlative but on two occasions you could be forgiven for sensing the presence of the maestro. Opening track ‘Chase the Moon’ possess a killer melody, is ripe with metaphors and meticulously strummed. Any similarity to the aforementioned legend is coincidental… or not. Later in the album, ‘Making It Up’ evokes a similar effect albeit with a little more pace. 

2024’s SUPERPOSITiON revealed a more experimental side to Lewis’s work and while that has been generally left in the locker for this record, snippets do catch the ear such as intros to ‘Old Love’ and ‘My Life Living Me’. Both songs quickly settle into the album groove proving winning numbers. The former has the influence of Hank Williams stamped all over it to widen the influential input. Keeping in a country frame of mind, the exceptional fragility to ‘Nothing Could Break Us Apart’ pushes this tender waltz to the top of the pile. Twang joins the acoustic appeal early in ‘I Know’ where you feel that stripping back is only part the way there and layers have been effectively ripped back. 

Title track ‘Everything’s Fine’ anchors the first half and is one of those everyday mundane statements adopting a whole new shine when attached to song. This part of the album does reveal a marginally fuller sound shy of defining the overall feel. For a break in Lewis’s voice, Judy Blank helps out on ‘The Light’, a sparse duet of pleasurable delight. ‘I’ll Never Be Enough’ completes the original lyrical input asserting itself as a track in the definable spectrum of how the album is received. 

At the heart of the record, Lewis inserts a short guitar instrumental. ‘Lishcey’s Retreat’ is named after his cat and gently pauses things before the depth of normality resumes. ‘Three County Highway’ is a song Lewis wishes he had written but has settled with adding the Indigo Girls cover as a suitable place to close a record rich in songwriting.

For over a decade, the track ‘3/4 Time’ resided at the top of the Sam Lewis tree for me. One listen to ‘Chase the Moon’ changed the narrative. It is the perfect conduit into EVERYTHING’S FINE, an album that sweetly serenades from start to finish. Immerse yourself into this simple offering and the title sentiment will leave its mark. 

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