Let’s get the clichés out of the way first, shall we? Sammy Kay is from Asbury Park, New Jersey. Greetings from it and all that.
Of greater relevance to “July 1960” is this from his bio on Spotify: “Some folks say that Sammy is the Andy Kaufman of Americana. Also, punk. Folk as well. Sometimes Ska. Either which way, he’s just a joke.”
If he’s Kaufman, there’s no goofing on Elvis and if there’s a joke, no ones laughing, because on “July 1960” – his first album for five years – he’s stripped everything down to its most cathartic. On “Greyhound Bus” for example, he sings “I was born on the back of a Greyhound bus, pack of smokes in my right hand”. The contrast with Poison, say, who sang of the wonder they felt when they took “a greyhound limousine straight to Grand Central NYC,” couldn’t be starker.
The harmonica wails on that one, and if in other hands, “Love Song” would have been a warm celebration of just that, here it sounds like something Jason Isbell was demoing to shake his demons off.
John Calvin Abney is superb on Pedal Steel, which is always the most atmospheric of instruments and it makes tracks like “Southern Withdrawals” stand out, and if Gaslight Anthem truly explored the darkness on the edge of town, then they’d do so, surely, with the brilliance of “Don’t Like Surprises”.
You imagine that Kay is the type of chap who reflects on everything, and “Another Letter To Myself” rather underlines that, and if the spectre of the “Nebraska” album hangs over this, then “Jim’s Ride Home” makes it as plain as day.
The fact that “Skeletons” is less than two minutes long, proves the point that Punk rock doesn’t need loud guitars, and a record that sounds fragile at the best of times seems especially so on “Meet You In Mexico” and if “A Better Way” might be expected to find a silver lining on the horizon, then don’t be misled.
Music doesn’t need gimmicks and nonsense. Social media campaigns and any of that. It just needs to be played one more time with feeling – as another band from New Jersey said at the end of “Bad Medicine”.
“July 1960” feels like you are intruding on someone’s diaries at times, but my goodness, there’s a feeling that Sammy Kay means every damn word.
Rating 9/10
