Sam Fender - Hypersonic Missiles

ESSENTIAL ALBUM

Black Vinyl. Released 13/09/19.

Genre: Indie

Sam Fender's debut album, Hypersonic Missiles was written, recorded and produced at Fender’s own self-built warehouse studio in North Shields. It was recorded alongside long-standing friend and producer, Bramwell Bronte.

When Sam Fender won the BRITs Critics’ Choice award at the tail end of 2018, his name was added to a list of previous winners that includes the likes of Adele, Florence and The Machine, Sam Smith, and Ellie Goulding. It’s a veritable hall of fame that feels a million miles away from the guitar-fuelled indie rock that Sam writes. It was deserved recognition for the hard-working Fender, but nobody was as shocked as he was when he first heard the news, driving past his old secondary school where a teacher once told him to put his musical aspirations to one side because it would amount to nothing.

Sam Fender is a rare talent. A 24-year-old working-class musician from the North who plays every gig as though it might well be his last, armed with this huge, cavernous vocal, guitar strapped on (a Fender, obviously), and fuelled by that seemingly old-school belief that great guitar music still has the power to change lives and influence people. There’s a loose thread that has run through all of Sam’s songs to date and that’s in the focus of his lyrics. Observational, questioning and socially engaged, Sam has an innate gift for simplifying matters of the newsworthy and topical.