“Maybe it’s all romance,” New York musician Sam Owens says of You, Forever, his second album as Sam Evian. Maybe so, but Owens’ often listless vocals never approach the emotional heft necessary to match his tender, introspective lyrics or his band’s robust — if canned — Americana. The album was recorded on reel-to-reel tape in an upstate New York rental house, but, rather than injecting a cohesive warmth, the energetic live playing leaves the singer’s uncertain quietude awkward and exposed. Owens sounds cowed by the decidedly mild sonics surrounding him and seems unable to properly access the depths he’d clearly like to plumb.
On the otherwise jaunty “Country,” this disconnect between vocals and instrumentation leaves the lyrics disquieting and rote. For instance, “Hold on tighter to me, baby/don’t let me go” comes off as a recitation of lines, rather than a plea for closeness. Owens doesn’t seem so much lonely in the nothingness of the open road as lonely within himself, uncomfortable and out of step with his thumping band. Similarly, “Summer Day,” while it strives to jog You, Forever out of the doldrums with lush twangs of electric guitar and an open, agreeable groove, fails to truly climax due to the unsettling disconnect between vocal conviction and instrumental energy. Fittingly, the song’s slow, haunted ending evokes something left unsaid.
It’s mostly left to guest musicians to deliver exceptional moments. “Where Did You Go?” is breezy, joyful pop in the mold of Kyle “King Tuff” Thomas’ Happy Birthday, bopping along under Hannah Cohen’s fortifying backup vocals to give Owens his strongest platform and tightest result. On the otherwise maudlin “Anybody” airy saxophone drifts over a low, slow kick drum and cymbal, leading into a satisfying falsetto hook—one tantalizing example of intention aligned with delivery. Between those highlights, “Health Machine” even teases a looser side of Sam Evian, the band, with a malaise-cracking guitar solo from Adam Brisbin and a messy saxophone carving a little chaos into the staid proceedings.
You, Forever is marbled with isolation and internal restlessness — it’s telling that the titular “you” apparently refers, in part, to Owens himself. Disappointing, then, that each time tension seems primed to erupt, Owens opts to exhale and slouch; it’s left to his band to plot You, Forever’s emotional course. A distant howl midway through the title track is as physically raw as he seems willing to get—Pussy Cats this is not. Instead, Owens sounds most at home on “Katie’s Rhodes,” both the album’s finale and most minimal moment. Stripped of nearly his whole band, with a refrain more breathed than sung, Owens seems finally to have found some solace, and maybe even romance, in the unknowable “dark, dark night.”