Review Summary: Levin is yet another teenager that sounds much more accomplished than his age would indicate.
A year ago, when New York young man Sam Levin released his debut album Frame of Mind he was 15. On the promo shots, he looked like he was 12, the age when he came up with his first EP (he actually released a few singles even before that!). That was in 2017. A year later, Sam came up with his second album, I Am, and on his promo images he looks like he skipped a step - he looks like he’s 14. They were probably checking his ID every few minutes while he was doing a promo tour of East Coast coffeehouses.
When music and child prodigies are concerned you always tend to approach them with caution, often expecting squeaky voices and, well, childish songs and instrumentation. Or you can expect something quite extraordinary, like Bright Eyes, Australian Ben Lee or The Lemon Twigs brothers. Levin is neither but is much closer to the second category than the first. Actually, after some nifty electronic fills (Levin plays everything on the album) of the “Intro” pass by, and Carbon, the first vocal track comes in, you can immediately notice the vocal similarities Levin shares with Ben Lee when he was of similar age as Levin now. Also, like Lee and Conor Oberst, aka Bright Eyes, Levin has already learned how to control and use it properly.
The other thing you notice, as is evident on tracks like “Sessions” and “I Was” is that Levin has already mastered quite a few intricacies of guitar playing, with that instrument he is not just another teenager trying to impress girls in his class. Spending most of his time with music since he was just seven years old obviously gave him the opportunity to be proficient in other instruments, but at the moment, the guitar is obviously his forte. Songwriting, as evident on tracks like “With Love and Compassion” and “Everyone Goes” is quite strong, and as far as lyrics are concerned, he is not yet at Oberst’s level yet, but he sure is getting there.
All taken into consideration, Sam Levin is no musical child or teenager, but can already be proud of his music when compared with quite a few of the ‘big boys’. You can expect some excellent music from Levin further on.
