The Pop Corporation

Nature is fantastic and everyone knows that, but there is a mild reticence when people tell you to reconnect with it, sounding like awful crusties. Sam Lee is probably worried he comes off a bit like that – he pretty much said as much in a recent feature with MOJO – but he needn’t.

He has a new LP out produced by Bernard Butler which looks at our relationship with getting out there and touching a bit of grass and smelling the flowers once in a while. Called ‘songdreaming’, this is folk that is more steeped in Fred Neil, Bill Callaghan and say, ‘Astral Weeks’, rather than dreary acoustic music made by someone who didn’t have enough mates to form a band (you know the types).

It’s a body of work that sounds like twilight strolls and clacking a twig against a fence, all delivered in a rich baritone with ornamentations of jazz and whatnot. It’s lovely stuff.

He used to be a survival expert like Ray Mears, which is kinda fun isn’t it? It’s all a smidge middle class, but it’s that nice ’70s middle class folkieness which we can get on board with. Have a listen to ‘Green Mossy Banks’ and see what you think.