(2021) Kashena Sampson - Time Machine



Review:
The follow up to Kashena Sampson‘s 2017 debut, Time Machine, has had a fraught journey into the light, a tornado in 2020 destroying the Nashville bar where she works to fund her music, leaving her unable to release the already completed album. Then came the pandemic. However, travails have been overcome, and it’s finally arrived, an 11-song exploration of her struggles with co-dependency and finding herself, all the original numbers by herself or co-penned with other female writers. The album finds her reunited with producer Jon Estes, who also played bass, piano, cello and organ alongside Jeremy Fetzer on guitar, drummer Jon Radford and Elizabeth Estes on strings. It opens to the notes of resonator guitar with Hello Darkness, a countrified cover of an obscure 1970 number by Dutch outfit Shocking Blue that showcases Sampson’s soulful, warbling twang that has seen her likened to the young Linda Ronstadt and a dustier Dolly Parton. It’s followed by the first of the original numbers, a co-write with sister Jolana and Erin Rae, Alone And In Love Again, a number about not quite getting it right (“I’m dancing one step off, singing out of key”) in the relationship stakes (“The nights you were right there, I didn’t notice/Till the hour I woke up and you were gone”). From The Outside turns its lens on the daily struggles of a musician’s life, the struggles in trying to make it that outsiders never see (“Another year on the same stretch of road/There’s a loneliness there, late nights all on your own/That’s the sacrifice chasing a dream I suppose”) but also of how the music and performing make it worthwhile (“Don’t make much sense till the moment I step on that stage”), yet tempered with the reality that “One minute your golden, the next they don’t care who you are”. Matters of the heart return for the unrequited love (“I stood to the side weary and waiting/While she drug you around, you wouldn’t let go”) in the strummed country gospel sway I Plead Desire, a co-write with Kyshona Armstrong apparently part-inspired by a misheard lyric from Judee Sill’s Jesus Was A Crossmaker, though to be honest the object of her affections doesn’t seem the greatest catch (“Posted a letter to the house of corrections/Last time we spoke was three weeks ago/You lived your life drugging and drinking”). Written with Jolana and arranged for piano, mellotron and nimble acoustic guitar, the title track with its show tune air touches on how past experiences shape us into the person we become, remembering a childhood when “Parents were the heroes we built them up to be/A magic world we lived inside/Where stories dreamt would come to life/Anything was possible it seemed”, of being a teenager “Pretending to be grown…defiant and invincible” in a “self-directed movie… Auditioning for every part/Acting out the scene”, before realising “there’s no answers/You’ll have to make it on your own”. A brief acoustic guitar instrumental, Interlude provides the bridge into A Little Spot of Sun, another sibling co-write, an organ-led upbeat Partonesque country jog about appreciating the good things in life and realising dark clouds will eventually pass over (“Used to be a beggar/A soul without a home/Now all my hard pressed sorrows laid to rest/Misfortune will not find me/For he has been outdone”). As such, it’s fittingly followed by Whole Lot Better, a self-penned swampy R&B inflected chugger with Creedence echoes about self-assuredness and, written after moving in her own place for the first time in eight years (“Been so long since I had my own spot/And I think it’s gonna be ok …My sweet man’s comin’ round/Friends all have their doubts/Shows up every time half drunk and half stoned/But he’s good to his woman where it counts”), celebrating new beginnings. Written by Jolana and featuring piano and strings embellishments, the soaringly sung Old Bones is a slow gospel blues sway about finding calm and peace (“I am weary from where I’ve been/Can’t listen anymore/Give me some room/Lord knows it can’t come too soon/There ain’t nothing I need to do right now/That cannot wait”) that you could hear Mavis Staples singing to the congregation. The final two tracks are both sister collaborations, the first, The Black Sea, ostensibly about being a past toxic relationship (“In a land of vagrant thieves/Where the black sea meets the shore/There lives a love that once I had/Who yearns for me no more …Oh he had me and he took me/How he used me as if I was his to own”), but which seems to be more about overcoming being in thrall to depression and lack of self-worth (“With the night in dreams he comes to me/Drifts back into my arms/Yet with the falling of the tide/I wake to find he’s gone”). Finally, featuring Jon Estes on harp and Evan Cobb on flute, Work Of Art is about running into an old flame (“Been too long since we last met/How you’ve been on my mind from time to time/Seems you’re doing well/Yeah, I’ve been doing fine”), but having no regrets, about letting go and being grateful for what the experience brought (“And though it’s hard to say/Its better off this way/And I thank you for the way you changed my life/It’s amazing how you knew me/Somehow you saw right through me/Found the beauty in all my broken parts”). If her debut offered an initial promise that Sampson was a timeless voice for the years, this is a 24-carat confirmation that she belongs in the ranks of the greats. Her gold will not tarnish. — folkradio.co.uk



Track Listing:
01 - Hello Darkness
02 - Alone And In Love Again
03 - From The Outside
04 - I Plead Desire
05 - Time Machine
06 - Interlude
07 - Little Spot Of Sun
08 - Whole Lot Better
09 - Old Bones
10 - The Black Sea
11 - Work Of Art


Media Report:
Genre: folk-rock
Country: USA
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits