Last night, not long before turning in, I pulled up YouTube on the TV and clicked play on a 1971 clip of Carole King performing “So Far Away” from BBC’s In Concert, a series that spotlighted a single artist on each of its hour-long episodes. The song hails from her classic second album, Tapestry, which sold a bajillion copies that year and since. Mega-hits subsist on the confluence of talent and timing, of tapping into a thirst for something beyond the norm—and such it was with Tapestry, arguably the album that solidified the singer-songwriter boom of the early 1970s.
Other artists, other albums, played important roles in creating and extending the climate for its success, of course, as did the world writ large. The late ‘60s and early ‘70s, for those unaware, were accented by war, racial strife, inflation, shifting social mores, political polarization and retrenchment—and if much of that sounds similar to the present day, there’s a reason; to borrow a line from Ecclesiastes 1:9, “What has happened before will happen again, what has been done before will be done again.”
In any event, the singer-songwriters of that era coped with the crazy world around them by looking inward; they etched introspection into oft-poetic lyrics about love and life, and paired their parables to drinkable melodies.
Whether today’s algorithm-driven culture is ripe for a resurgence of wooden music is a question beyond my ken, but this I know: Sam Robbins is one helluva singer and songwriter. His songs conjure those of his heroes, including James Taylor, Jim Croce and Harry Chapin. They tackle the enduring concerns of the heart as well as worries unique to the modern world. “Piles of Sand,” which opens the 10-track set, contemplates time passages, for instance, while “The Real Thing”—which I spotlighted a while back—tackles the sad sameness that accents too many American cities and towns. “What a Little Love Can Do,” on the other hand, offers a holistic approach to achieving the change many clamor for: “I want to believe in something bigger than me/I want to believe in where this all could lead/But the older I get, the more I see/Whatever world I want to live in begins with me.”
“People Gonna Talk” isn’t the classic Lee Dorsey song later covered by Linda Ronstadt, but a treatise on the unwanted feedback that pockmarks the creative life. “Rosie,” an instrumental, showcases Robbins’ talent on fingerstyle guitar. “All So Important,” meanwhile, injects humor while observing that, when all’s said and done, our puffery is destined to be forgotten: “A bronze bust of a Roman ruler, emperor of everywhere the sun could shine/thought his name would live on forever/but now you can only read it if you squint your eyes.” “Live Them in Love,” meanwhile, offers a solid philosophy for living out one’s years.
The title track could well be an anthem for our times; it examines how the whitewashing of history steals from our understanding of the present: “I thought I’d read Martin Luther King and learned about the Civil War/but it all seemed so distant, so hard to believe in the million little strings connecting them to me.” “Ride With Me,” a sweet love song, lightens the mood, while album closer “I Will”—yes, the Beatles song—is a sublime duet with Robbins’ soon-to-be wife, Halley Neal.
In short, So Much I Still Don’t See is a welcome companion for these unsettled times. It may not change the world, but it will better one’s mood.
The tracks:
The Old Grey Cat 