There are some people who, no matter what life throws at them, will still look you in the eye and say, “I’m fine, how are you?” as if the job is not to be honest, but to make sure everyone else is comfortable first.
I know a woman like that. One of the nicest people I’ve ever met, the sort who would do anything for anybody without even being asked. And the last few months have just kept kicking her while she’s down. One thing after another. Yet every time you ask, that same line comes back. “I’m fine, how are you?”
I was thinking about her when I read Sam Lewis talking about this record on Spotify. He says “Everything’s Fine” has become a kind of blanket statement he’s become obsessed with, something people use to describe the micro or macro of life, even when it plainly isn’t true. That tension, between what we say and what we really mean, sits right at the heart of this, his seventh studio album. And because Lewis is one of those writers who seems to understand that people are rarely only one thing at once, it gives the whole record a proper emotional pull.
“Chase The Moon” opens things with gorgeous warmth. There is real beauty in the words here, but also in the way the song is put together. The instrumentation is perfect, every part doing exactly what it needs to without once showing off. “I Know” carries that feeling on, warm and inviting, but universal too, as if Lewis is writing something very personal and somehow letting everybody else find themselves in it. That is one of the gifts of this album all the way through: even when it feels intimate, it never shuts the listener out.
The title track, “Everything’s Fine,” has something of the timeless troubadour about it. It sounds fully assured, like Lewis knows exactly where this song lives and exactly how to let it breathe. That sense of certainty matters, because this is not a record dealing in easy answers. It is a record about the things people say to get through the day, and the things they maybe can’t bring themselves to say out loud.
“Old Love” has an old-time country feel, something of Jim Reeves in the bones of it, and it captures the mindset of an overthinker who simply cannot let go. You know the one. We all do. “Lischey’s Retreat” then acts as a finger-picking palate cleanser, a small but beautifully judged change of pace that gives the record a little extra shape.
There is a bit more energy in “Making It Up,” but even there the line that lingers is “you don’t have to travel far to get out of your head.” For some people, of course, that is the furthest journey of all. Maybe that is what Lewis is getting at here. Maybe we are all, to some degree, just faking it and hoping nobody notices.
“The Light” has an eerie quality, as if its promise is somewhere way off in the distance rather than right in front of you, and that only makes it more affecting. Judy Blank’s contribution is sensational. The duet is perfect, never overplayed, just two voices finding the exact emotional temperature the song needs. Later on, “I’ll Never Be Enough For You” is a genuinely hard listen, not because it fails, but because it cuts close. It feels like catharsis caught on tape.
Then there is “My Life Living Me,” which has a real Texas flavour to it, and the opening line, “I’m just a big baby,” pulls you in straight away because it is disarming, funny and telling all at once. By the time “Three County Highway” closes the set, it feels like the product of months on the road, a battered guitar case in one hand and a dream still somehow intact in the other.
Sometimes you come across people who just have a way of telling a story. Sam Lewis is one of them. He does not need melodrama, and he does not need to oversell anything. He just understands that the quietest admissions often hit the hardest, and that songs can hold contradictions the same way people do.
Everything might not be fine, but “Everything’s Fine” is a wonderful record.
RATING 8.5/10
