SOUND BITES

  When last we heard from Sam Roberts, he was frolicking in the CanCon supergroup Anyway Gang alongside members of Sloan, Tokyo Police Club and Hollerado; their 2019 album was a little slight and scattershot, but at least it was upbeat and fun. Roberts seems to have brought this same approach to his seventh album. All of Us is his most compact full-length offering yet, with its nine songs taking all of 37 minutes; coming more than four years after the band's previous outing, it's bound to have some questioning how much more Roberts has in the tank. The truth is, Roberts overcame a bad bout of writer's block to make this album happen; as a creative type who's felt the sting of writer's block, I can certainly sympathize. The extra time All of Us took to create allowed for more fine-tuning, but it also makes for a more timely record; even though the album was completed before the global pandemic took hold, it's hard to imagine a song like Ghost Town being create...

The sixth full-length Sam Roberts album, and third credited to the band as a whole, takes the synth-pop leanings of previous LP Lo-Fantasy and augments them with the band's core sound in a way that makes it feel like a comfortable evolution rather than a jarring experiment. Thick grooves and strong melodies, the eternal hallmarks of Roberts' music, are front and centre on TerraForm , and there isn't a song on the tracklist that doesn't deliver these as advertised. This is very much an energized, engaged record, one that occasionally veers into psychedelic territory but refuses to lose itself in a haze. All told, there are few surprises in store (unless you missed Lo-Fantasy ), but if you've followed the Sam Roberts Band through all of their shape shifts over the years, it's honestly kind of refreshing to not have expectations subverted for once. October 28, 2016 • Universal Highlights TerraForm • Rogue Empire • Spring Fever

Since breaking onto the scene with independently-released early hit Brother Down and subsequently utterly smashing with full-length debut We Were Born In A Flame about a decade ago, Sam Roberts has been fighting against the wishes of fairweather fans of the time who dearly wished he'd be an ongoing source for the workman-like, earnest rock that The Tragically Hip had long abandoned in favour of artistic expression. Ever the experimentalist, his very next album (2006's Chemical City ) veered off the beaten path into psychedelia and ragged soul. He'd later incorporate other influences, such as Motown and new wave, but remained very much a rocker at his core. Lo-Fantasy retains some of Roberts' rock sensibility, but it's by and large a synth-and-sheen affair, infusing a late-80's energy into an otherwise straightforward collection of songs. It's interesting that this album sees release in mid-February considering just how sunny it is. That cover is no coi...

SAM ROBERTS BAND I Feel You From: Collider Released: May 10 Having already endured the breakout success ( Brother Down was Canada's it rock song of 2002), the tentative dabbling in the U.S. market, as is the rite of passage for all moderately successful Canuck artists (2003's debut We Were Born in a Flame was the best time to try; one of the best albums of the year, it made a small dent in the American mindset upon its release there a year later), the difficult, druggy third album (the aptly named 2005 disc Chemical City ), and the subdued creative step backward (2008's Love at the End of the World , aside from hit single Them Kids , was really kinda bland), it seems according to script that Sam Roberts would start settling in on his fourth album (and first with the band credited as equal contributors), Collider (you know, I think it was a bad idea to give me brackets). Well, as far as settling in goes, Roberts does and doesn't on Collider .  W...