Sam Carter
The No Testament
Release Date: Aug 20, 2012
Genre(s): Folk
Record label: Captain Records
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Album Review: The No Testament by Sam Carter
Fairly Good, Based on 2 Critics
Based on rating 3/5
Three years ago, when he released his debut album, it seemed Sam Carter was about to become a new English folk-scene celebrity. He has been mysteriously quiet since then, but here's a second reminder of his bleak, no-nonsense songwriting skills. He is currently fascinated by American spirituals, gospel and the "shapenote" tradition (a 19th-century style of teaching community singing), and the album starts with a rousing, unaccompanied hymn from a north London shapenote choir, before Carter picks up the melody and adds his own lyrics on contemporary materialism and hard times in Dreams Are Made of Money.
Opinion: Fairly Good
Bookended by brilliance, Carter’s second LP sags in its middle. Jeanette Leech 2012 The winner of the BBC Folk Award for best newcomer in 2010 has, record-wise, been relatively quiet since 2009’s Keepsakes. Sam Carter says, in this three-year period, he’s been mainlining American spiritual and gospel music. The No Testament is his attempt to partner these devotional styles with his modern secular concerns.