Sam Green and The Time Machine
Sam Green and the Time Machine
The earliest and most recent releases from Sam Green and the Time Machine available on Spotify are 2013’s Players All Are We and For the Good of All. 2018’s Ten Parts of the Journey and Baked Beans (432 Hertz) are the newest. They are, for the most part, solidly within the folk/Americana tradition, but Green’s skills are elastic enough to weave inventive instrumental sounds into the compositional fabric. It is easy to mistake his artistic debts. The simple-minded listener will hear a lot of superficial similarities to Bob Dylan, among others, but others will detect the presence of Cat Stevens, among others, present in his songs.
The beautiful lyricism, musically and lyrically, heard during “If a Rose” is captivating. This track from Players All Are We begins with a gossamer-like keyboard sheen coloring the background while piano and brass make subdued contributions to the recording. It has a languid pace but never tarries. This release, in some respects, is the most daring of Green’s Spotify uploads. The acapella performance “Have the Seasons Changed?” and the instrumental “Doesn’t Matter” have no comparable tracks on later albums. The former is one of the greatest achievements Green has yet to record and handily dismisses any criticism of his vocal skills. He may not sound pretty, but there’s no question he can communicate.
The timeless yearning driving “If Love is an Apple” gains added velocity thanks to a hard-changing instrumental track. This is your typical folk song for acoustic guitar, it doesn’t attempt broaching new territory, but the language is his own. “Seven Lonely Children” and “I’m a Poor Man, You See?” are among my favorites from For the Good of All. The first track has one of the finest fusions of lyric and arrangement available on any Sam Green and the Time Machine release and the full-band performance powering the latter has surprising and pleasing bounce. He has the same confidence present with this approach without a doubt and this would make an exceptional live number.
The title track for 2018’s Baked Beans (432 Hertz) is a haunting performance. We’re back to his typical stance of a spartan musical setting but it is particularly right here. Green’s “speaker” is one of his more desperate characters, their life reduced to simple survival, though the song is never so bleak that it’s a chore to listen. “Broken Hill”, another first class track from the release and among his most popular on Spotify, doesn’t pack the same wallop, it’s more vague than the title song, but the music generates a magical hypnotic effect on me.
His 2018 release Ten Parts of the Journey may be his best. The opening cut “Part 1: I Carry the Load” serves notice to listeners that this will be lean, stripped-back affair reliant on soul and understatement to carry the day. The ghostly steel guitar works as a sort of faint counterpoint with Green’s vocal. Other standouts are tracks such as “Day of Peace”, “Albert and Bob”, and “One Pot Screamer”. The continued evolution of his art reaches a crescendo here and he’s working at such a high level, we can safely bet future releases will continue clearing the same high bar.
Joshua Beach
Melbourne, AUS
5/2021
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