Los Angeles-based singer Sam Burton will release his forthcoming album ‘Dear Departed’ on July 14th via Partisan Records, his debut for the label (IDLES, Fontaines DC, Beth Orton, Fela Kuti).
To coincide with the announcement, Burton has shared the album’s gorgeous lead single, “Long Way Around” and its accompanying lyric video.
Produced by Jonathan Wilson (Angel Olsen, Father John Misty, Margo Price), “Long Way Around” is full of smoldering melodies that meet again and again with ripples of piano and swells of orchestration – headlined by Sam’s evocative, velvet-lined vocals.
LISTEN TO “LONG WAY AROUND” HERE
About the song, Burton says: “‘Long Way Around’ was the first song I wrote in this new batch of songs, and I feel like it helped set the tone for the album. Jonathan [Wilson] and I ended up staying pretty true to the demo versions, but he added these subtle conga drums that were inspired by John Lennon’s ‘Walls and Bridges’ album. It’s a song about missed opportunities and the passing of time. The noble failure.”
For Burton, ‘Dear Departed’ arose from a time of rebirth. In the last few years, the LA-based singer basically started over. He temporarily abandoned the life he’d built in LA to live in Utah where he grew up, moving again to hole up in a cabin on a rural northern California farm. Sam describes the album as being wracked with pain and loss, and he spends much of the time saying goodbye to a version of himself.
‘Dear Departed’ was recorded at Wilson’s Topanga Canyon studio with some of the best studio players in LA. From the production to the performances to Burton’s core compositions, there’s a timelessness across its ten songs. Together with Wilson, Burton is able to achieve a sound that never descends into retro pastiche, but rather becomes an evocative echo, a dream of the past. Like Sam and his band are crammed onto the corner stage of a smoke-filled bar in a long-lost time. Recalling a modern-day Campbell, Orbison, or Nilsson, the album showcases Burton’s inherent knack for mining pure Laurel Canyon AM gold. In scope, the music finds Burton using a far bigger canvas than on his acclaimed 2020 debut ‘I Can Go With You,’ giving the emotions therein a new sense of urgency and intensity.
In the last year Burton has toured with Loving, Jose Gonzalez, Weyes Blood, and Indigo Sparke, and In January he completed a three-week residency at LA club TeeGee.
Burton will also perform at End of the Road Festival in the UK later this summer. More touring to be announced soon.
