Sam Carter Silver Horizon Vinyl LP 2024

1. Silver Horizon
2. A Place to Call My Own
3. Simpler Days
4. You Give Me Life
5. Good Enough
6. Through the Night
7. We're Still Here
8. Boxes and Bags
9. If You Set Me Free
10. All I Need To Know
11. Sights Beyond the Sky

Over his fifteen-year career, Midlands-born guitarist and songwriter Sam Carter has earned a reputation for vivid, heartfelt songwriting and captivating live performances. He is a highly regarded instrumentalist, renowned by many as "the finest English-style fingerpicking guitarist of his generation" (Jon Boden). Sam has appeared on national TV, including Later... with Jools Holland, won a BBC Folk Award, and toured the world, sharing stages with folk's leading lights, including Richard Thompson, Eliza Carthy, Martin Simpson, and Sam Sweeney.

Carter released his last studio album, the acclaimed Home Waters (2020), during the pandemic. After touring extensively once the world opened up, he felt called away from the chamber folk of Home Waters. "My writing and listening shifted, probably due to the isolation",explains Sam. "Storytelling gave way to something more impressionistic and abstract. I found hope and solace in escapism." During the summer of 2022, he allowed his writing to be infused with his love for the ethereal textures of slowcore and dream pop bands such as Low and Cocteau Twins, and Silver Horizon began to take shape.

With renowned producer Andy Bell at the helm, Carter began recording Silver Horizon in January 2024 at the remote Red Kite Studios in Wales. Armed with his 1966 Gibson ES125 electric and a collection of effects pedals, Sam cut the core tracks in three days with bassist Ben Nicholls (Seth Lakeman, Nadiene Shah) and drummer Evan Jenkins (Robben Ford, Matt Scholfield) before guitarist Stuart McCallum (The Breath) wove his epic reverb-drenched soundscapes around many of Silver Horizon's songs. Rowan Rheingans (Lady Maisery, The Rheingans Sisters) added backing vocals, bringing a soulful depth to tracks including 'Through The Night', while Ian Stephenson (Kan, Baltic Crossing) contributed measured harmonium, adding texture to tracks such as 'Boxes and Bags'.

The opener and title track 'Silver Horizon' ushers in the album's central theme. "It's a kind of prayer from the perspective of a person at a turning point. They're asking the future--symbolised by the horizon--for the peace and reassurance they know it can't give by its very nature, but they're asking all the same. It's not a concept album strictly, but in each song, the narrator is either just about to or has undergone a major change." In some songs, this theme plays out in a sense of foreboding, as in the ominous 'If You Set Me Free', where Carter's increasingly tense minor key guitar work sets the scene for a depiction of Stockholm Syndrome. Elsewhere, in 'We're Still Here', we find ourselves on the other side of an ordeal and share the narrator's relief when Carter and Rheingans duet on the repeated line "It was touch and go for a minute there" over a John Martyn-flavoured guitar groove.

Beginning with Carter's inimitable fingerstyle guitar work before expanding into an epic dream-like soundscape, album closer Sights Beyond the Sky is a space-themed ode to the transformative power of a relationship. "I'm still dealing with themes of love, loss, and change that have been a part of my earlier work, but at the moment, sketching events in an impressionistic way instead of documenting them in detail gives the songs more room to breathe." This seamless blend of the otherworldy with the personal makes Silver Horizon the most remarkable album of Carter's career and looks set to cement his reputation as a standout songwriter of his generation.