Sam Fender - People Watching
On People Watching, canny chanter Sam Fender comes to the crossroads on this vexed but heartfelt third album
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It’s easy to be skeptical of Sam Fender. Blond, blue eyed, looking like Gary Barlow’s indie kid brother, with a name that feels like a brand endorsement, when he picked up the Critics Award at the 2019 BRITs, you might have mistaken him for the industry’s latest tastefully distressed millennial singer-songwriter. But since his debut single in 2017, the canny chanter from North Shields has emerged as the most driven, distinctive and fascinating British pop artist since Amy Winehouse.
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His second album, Seventeen Going Under, released in autumn 2021, was a remarkable achievement in particular, a British pop record that revealed something of the temper of modern times. Fender sang of retail parks, cocaine, casual violence, the DWP and suicide – a world familiar enough in the works of Stormzy or Sleaford Mods, but close to a revelation in the heart of the Radio 2 A-list.
What sold the vision was Fender’s endearing anger and confusion, and his rich Geordie roar, as though the Angel of the North was suddenly breaking into song. No less important was his ability to pull off a convincing take on what his wikipedia page describes as “heartland rock”. In practice it’s the sound of mid-’80s Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen filtered through the dynamics of The Strokes and Arctic Monkeys – with maybe a distant jangling echo of great lost mid-80s Tyneside hopes Hurrah!.
AdvertisementPeople Watching, his third album, has been a couple of years in the making, recorded in London and then LA, and reveals an artist at a crossroads. The title track, released as the lead single at the end of last year, showcased his collaboration with Adam Granduciel from The War On Drugs and felt like a statement of intent. Though it’s rooted in a familiar Fenderworld – a bedside vigil for a dying mentor in an underfunded care home – Granduciel’s booming production seems scaled for the freeway rather the A167. So much of the album seems to have at least one foot or a couple of wheels across the Atlantic: “Crumbling Empire” opens on the ruined streets of Detroit and cruises along in Granduciel’s baleful Bruce Hornsby mode. And in “Wild Long Lie” one of Fender’s mates takes an unlikely moment out from caning it to consider American carceral policy.
If one route from Fender’s crossroads leads to the US, selling heartland rock back to the homeland (it beats taking coals to Newcastle) then another leads back to the old towns and villages where he increasingly feels like a stranger. If Seventeen Going Under was created out of an enforced period of lockdown introspection, People Watching wants to be an opening up, a re-engagement with old pals, guided by the affectionate but implacable spirit of Tish Murtha, the documentary photographer whose pictures grace the artwork.
But if Fender gets out of the confines of his own head, he finds plenty of people getting out of theirs. The ghost of Oasis seems to haunt a lot of the album, from the “Wonderwall”-y guitars that open “Chin Up”, an attempt to lean into and dance with the wild mood swings, to the pervading blizzard of cocaine that falls over so many characters in “Wild Long Lie” which concludes “I think I need to leave this town”.
One more road then, leads straight back inside the prison of the ego. “TV Dinner” is the album’s biggest departure. Over doleful piano chords, it’s a paranoid declaration of independence worthy of Kendrick Lamar, harking back to the demise of Amy Winehouse and detailing all the ways that young talents are led to market as cash cows. “No-one,” he sings defiantly, “gets into my space.”
But Fender – a man very proud of his Greggs Gold card – is ultimately too gregarious to stay in this fortress of solitude for very long. The album concludes back home “stomping around the village with you again”. “Something Heavy” is his version of “The Weight” – a hymn to mutual support in tough times, an offer to keep the kettle boiling even as everyone in the town falls victim to the black dogs of depression.
And the closing “Remember My Name” returns to his old council house in North Shields, with the rousing swells of the Easington Colliery Brass Band and Fender sounding a little like Sting in his higher register. For a lesser artist it might risk embarrassment: a Hovis ad homily to hearth and home. But it’s part of Sam Fender’s art that, like the Boss or Lindesfarne’s Alan Hull, he’s unafraid to risk sentimentality in his quest for real feeling. At the end of a vexed, troubled third album, it feels like a hard-earned affirmation of his roots, the people and community he’s still a part of and still committed to. In the rolling turmoil of 2025, these troubled heartlands need him more than ever.
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[viki-watchnow url=https://www.viki.com/tv/40442c-the-witch]
Source (1)
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 was traumatized by the abrupt deaths of multiple students who had crushes on her. Plagued by rumors that she was a “witch,” Mi Jeong decided to quit school and stay cooped up inside at home. Even then, her mysterious “curse” followed her, and her father tragically died after saving her from a venomous snake bite.
In a preview that aired at the end of the episode, it was revealed that it was not Mi Jeong’s idea to leave the village; instead, it turned out that she had been pressured to leave by the other villagers. Most shocking of all, Lee Dong Jin (GOT7’s Jinyoung)’s mother Mi Sook (Jang Hye Jin) was seen standing at the forefront of the group asking Mi Jeong to leave. Later, while lying in a hospital bed, Mi Sook confessed to her son, “I was the one who chased that girl away.”
As Mi Sook was always kind, friendly, and generous to not only her son but also her neighbors, her unexpected and seemingly uncharacteristic involvement in Mi Jeong’s departure raised the question of whether something else had happened in the village after her father’s death.
In newly released stills from the drama’s upcoming third episode, a remorseful Mi Sook brings up the incident with Mi Jeong, which had remained painfully buried in her heart. As she lies in the hospital with Dong Jin by her side, Mi Sook catches her son off guard with her shocking confession—and what she has to say ultimately makes Dong Jin determined to figure out and undo the “curse” that afflicts Mi Jeong.
The drama’s production team teased, “This week, the heartbreaking reason why Mi Jeong had no choice but to leave the village—and why Dong Jin wants so badly to help Mi Jeong return to an ordinary life—will be revealed.”
“Dong Jin will begin to dig into Mi Jeong’s ‘pattern of death’ in earnest,” they continued. “The true mystery will begin starting from Episode 3.”
The third episode of “The Witch” will air on February 22 at 9:10 p.m. KST.
In the meantime, check out the first two episodes of the drama with subtitles on Viki below!
[viki-watchnow url=https://www.viki.com/tv/40442c-the-witch]
Source (1) %23villa) |
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