Sam Outlaw - Popular Mechanics
In the 2010s, Sam Outlaw introduced himself with as much wry country & western traditionalism as Robbie Fulks did in the mid-1990s. And Outlaw’s third album, Popular Mechanics, is as superficially jarring a musical shift as Fulks’s own third album, Let’s Kill Saturday Night, was in 1998.
Yet Fulks jumped to a major label before polishing his sound into something-for-everyone Americana, while Outlaw has moved from L.A. to Nashville and gone without record-company support and has bolted the essence of his earlier craftsmanship into his new constructions.
He hasn’t gone off entirely on his own, though: Cheyenne Medders, a Nashville-based musician who’s worked with the Secret Sisters and Sarah Darling, is the Popular Mechanics producer and engineer as well as a contributor of many of the elements that define the LP as Outlaw’s homage to 1980s pop.
That homage often resembles the bow—or capitulation, some might say—that so much modern country music has made toward the mainstream. And it isn’t hard to hear the synthesizer washes, processed drums and smooth romanticism of the LP’s first single, “For the Rest of Our Lives,” as Outlaw’s venture to plant a flag in Keith Urban’s territory.
But Outlaw’s flag remains distinctive thanks to his voice as singer and songwriter. Urban likely couldn’t, or wouldn’t, write “Polyamorous,” a chiming, twangy tribute to the unusual relationship bonds that led to the creation of Wonder Woman, and he certainly wouldn’t emote convincingly about “writing these songs for religious fanatics” the way Outlaw does on the title track.
That track is one of the album’s boldest, with melty keyboard textures and earnestly plastic beats worthy of classic Cars, and “Half a World Away” recalls the global-music borrowings of Graceland-era Paul Simon.
If country-music radio programmers can’t finally get behind someone this cleverly catchy, they don’t know their business. If Sam Outlaw’s fans cry “Judas!,” they’re valuing purism over an artist’s impulses to expand, or just to have fun.
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Description: In the 2010s, Sam Outlaw introduced himself with as much wry country & western traditionalism as Robbie Fulks did in the mid-1990s.
