Review: Sam Fender Dives Into His Past With Stunning New Album Seventeen Going Under

: by Joe Sharratt; in Reviews; on 14 October 2021

North-east native Sam Fender is a young man with the world at his feet. From being named one of the BBC’s Sounds of 2018 to winning the Critics Choice Award at the 2019 Brit Awards, he and his debut album Hypersonic Missiles have been hoovering up accolades like they were as scarce as petrol. And with good reason too, Hypersonic Missiles was a gem, a record that, despite its youthful stance, in many ways bellied the tender years of its creator, a smart and accomplished collection that couldn’t obviously be bettered.

Except that’s exactly what Fender has done with the hotly-awaited followup Seventeen Going Under, which landed in the last week and is a record that will almost certainly see him needing to upgrade his trophy cabinet, packed as it is with stunningly well observed tales of youth, masculinity, and growing up and finding your place in the world.

Album opener Seventeen Going Under is like a microcosm of the whole album, a breathtakingly brilliant track that shimmers on the surface with all the twinkle and sparkle of Bruce Springsteen, but beneath that wrestles with the pains and pleasures of growing up in a way that has the visceral impact of The Streets at the height of Mike Skinner’s powers. It’s a truly fantastic listening experience from a singer songwriter of real craft and guile.

Get You Down does more of the same, and finds room to layer in gorgeous strings into the equation, while Spit Of You is an achingly powerful exploration of the father and son dynamic set against the loss of Fender’s own grandmother, with biting lyrics like “You kissed her forehead / And it ran like a tap / No more than four stone soaked wet through / And I'd never seen you like that”, and, simply, “I can talk to anyone / I can’t talk to you”.

At sixteen tracks and an hour plus running time, maintaining such intensity throughout is difficult, but something else Fender accomplishes. There’s no let up, and you can’t help but feel the same will be true again come awards season.

Seventeen Going Under tracklist: