When
Sam Fender made his full-length debut in 2019, it was in impressive fashion with
Hypersonic Missiles, a set of compassionate, politically charged anthems that split the difference between atmospheric rock and singer/songwriter traditions (he opened for
Bob Dylan and
Neil Young at Hyde Park that year). Less than two years later, his follow-up,
Seventeen Going Under, finds him looking back on his childhood in North Shields, outside of Newcastle, England. While the subject matter here is more personal, it sticks to a palette of lush, guitar-based band arrangements and doesn't shed any sociopolitical awareness. Most notably, rant-sung rocker "Aye" catalogs violent and abusive historical events, acknowledging complicit witnesses. The song's frustrations culminate in a derisive, repeated, "I don't have time for the very few/They never had time for me and you," in reference to the 1%. Later, the far more measured, melodic "Mantra" revisits similar sentiments with lines like "Please stop trying to find comfort in these sociopaths/Their beauty is exclusively on the surface." Among the more common autobiographical material is "Spit of You," which instead examines his relationship with his father. Its calmer tone and agile, picked guitar line back lyrics steeped in regret.
Fender still makes room for soaring anthems like the skittering "Paradigms," the driving "Get You Down," and the title track, a saxophone-bolstered chant-along that recalls suppressing anger as a teen. He closes
Seventeen Going Under with "The Dying Light," a ballad that looks for help getting through the nights, when distractions are more elusive. A piano ballad to begin, it ends a sentimental set with what seems like a fitting rush of crashing cymbals, throbbing bass, clanking piano, horns, and an emphatic resolved chord. ~ Marcy Donelson