Get the latest gossip

Sam Lee: songdreaming review – a moving tribute to Albion’s troubled soul


Disquiet pervades the folk singer’s self-written fourth album, with romantic love and awe of nature holding out against ecological collapse

Singer, promoter, wilderness expert(he trained with Ray Mears), Lee’s principal mission has been “finding new soundworlds for old songs”, many of them learned at the hearths of the travelling community. His third album, 2020’s , expanded the musical palette, setting Lee’s rich voice to innovative arrangements by Bernard Butler, the former Suede guitarist turned mature polymath. Opener Bushes and Briars begins as a leisurely search for birdsong that is gradually subsumed by a menacing churn of violin, piano, guitar and discordant noise.

Get the Android app

Or read this on The Guardian

Read more on:

Photo of Sam Lee

Sam Lee

Photo of Albion

Albion