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24 illinoisentertainer.com november 2019
fucking great.
Forgive me, but now cut to the morning
of August 16, 2017. Back in Indy, my moth-
er had been knocked off her feet by a bug,
and I’d arranged for three weeks off —
with a slew of stories in the can and paid
day-job leave — to help her recover. But, in
a battery of phone calls from paramedics,
her neighbors, and ultimately an emer-
gency room physician, I learned that she
peacefully passed, the way she wanted to
go, the day before I was set to leave.
“You’ll carry me out of this house feet first
— not withering away in some old folks’
home" was her mantra. I had just hung up
the phone from that final notice when it
rang again with a conversely cheerful
voice on the other end: “Hey — it’s Little
Steven, calling for our interview!” In the
chaos, I’d completely forgotten that I’d
scheduled one final phoner before I left,
with Springsteen’s right-hand man about have in your collection, music that could
literally save your life? As opposed to the
pretentious Village Voice school, which
parsed a colorful record down to a pale,
skeletal proton, under the caption of
‘Behold! The mighty proton!’ No. Not on
my watch. Fuck. That. Noise.
But had I gone too far out on a limb?
Had I spoken too soon? Nervously — once
I finally got the full Fender album — I
turned out the living room lights and hit
play, hoping I wasn’t wrong. I wasn’t.
From the anthemic, quasi-political title
track, which goes from gentle to jarring in
a heartbeat, in a flurry of poetic words
reminiscent of a young Bob Dylan, every
single song delivered the goods, beyond
all expectation. These songs were so good;
their composer possessed of such an
unusual self-assured, fully-formed rock
star identity, it was like he was a man who
fell to Earth, sans explanation. “Who’s
his new album Soulfire and accordant tour.
Choked up, I told him what just happened,
and he said, “Your mother? Whoa. That’s
the big one. You’re gonna need some time
— we can do this later.” Again, I felt some-
thing click, shift inside. I wiped away the
tears, rallied, and said 'No, this is exactly
what I need right now. This is what I DO.
And it was a great, reinvigorating talk, the
perfect panacea. So I returned to the
Midwest as an orphan, to a family house
that I had to single-handedly empty out
and sell, discarding childhood toys and
memories along the way. And no matter
who you are in this world, no matter how
famous or ignoble, there will come a time
when someone’s going through your stuff
with a Glad bag, going, “Trash. Garbage.
Trash.” All the while, I kept hearing Little
Steven songs like “Out of the Darkness” in
my head, without ever turning on my
iPod. I descended into my own darkness
on the edge of town, and it’s with me still.
Some days, I just feel rudderless, cast adrift
and a long fucking way from any recogniz-
able shore.
Final jump cut — bear with me. A few
weeks ago, after our November cover story
fell through, I proposed this to my (very
understanding and patient) IE publisher —
on the strength of the four singles I’d heard
so far I had already determined that Sam
Fender was the Best New Artist of the Year.
So why not look prescient by just saying so
in a cover yarn? Why not return to the
bare-knuckled rock journalism of yester-
year, when a writer would simply tell you,
straight up, that this was the greatest thing
since sliced bread, a record you had to this? asked my girlfriend of 30-plus years,
walking in midway through. “This,” I said,
“is why I do what I do.” But enough about
me, right?
In the interview, Fender is smart, savvy,
self-assured. It helps, of course, that he just
looks like a rock star already. On the
Missiles cover, he’s glaring out from
beneath bedhead bangs with the hooded
gaze and chiseled cheekbones of a
younger, hungrier Robert Pattinson (natu-
rally he’s already launched a parallel act-
ing career, logging roles on BBC TV series
like “Vera” and “Wolfblood”). It’s your
first hint that the music inside might tran-
scend, be something unusual, perhaps
extraordinary. The opening title track sets
the pace, starting on a clucking thrum and
Fender’s momentarily soft murmur as he
surveys the post-Trump/Brexit political
landscape and decides: “God bless
America and all of its allies/ I’m not the
first one to live with wool over my eyes/ I
am so blissfully unaware of everything/
Kids in Gaza are bombed and I’m just out
of it” goes one cynical verse, leading in to
the comparatively bellowed chorus: “All
the silver-tongued suits and cartoons that
rule my world/ Are saying it’s a high time
for hypersonic missiles.” Which is not
what this well-read 25-year-old from
North Shields is saying - by speaking in the
ennui-dripped voice of a lager-lout millen-
nial, his 'meh' shrug underscores the gen-
erational detachment that allowed idiocy
like Brexit to pass. Elsewhere, his social
commentary is even more Alfred E.
Newman — the chugging “Play God”
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