New Music You Gotta Hear: Sam Roberts Band's "Collider"

Sam Roberts is a Canadian musician who has been releasing albums along with his band for the last decade, to much acclaim. However, this acclaim and positive reception has seemingly been centered in Canada and the band has yet to truly break through in the States. With the Sam Roberts Band having just released their latest album this month, a fantastic work titled Collider, and will be performing in numerous U.S. cities throughout the next few months, it will be a shame if they still cannot break through.

Collider is a cohesive album that does not feature any glaring weak points. On a song by song basis, the album might not be considered to break much new ground. The album presents a catchy new rhythm in each song, and is pretty much entirely radio-friendly rather than feeling like it has a distinct set of what the "singles" are versus what the band really wanted to make. The album saves itself from succumbing to repetition thanks to what I thought to be the greatest achievement of the album, which is the musical diversity that distinctly sets apart each song while still somehow fitting together with ease. As an example, the album opens to the horn filled song "The Last Crusade" before immediately moving on to a more folk-sounding track with "Without a Map" and continues this trend throughout the album with some more rock sounding songs and at one point the album even reaches a seemingly reggae-inspired sound on "Streets of Heaven (Promises, Promises).

Along with --hopefully-- many others who are exposed to the band's most recent album, I am only a new fan of Sam Roberts; so I am yet to fully explore backwards into his discography and cannot draw much in the way of comparisons between Collider  and the band's past work, but from what I have heard, their latest project Collider is a slight deviation from the past when it comes to implementing a few more instruments and a less guitar-led sound.

We are only five months into the year, but as of now, Sam Roberts Band's Collider makes a strong case for my top album of the year so far. Check out the songs below and I strongly urge you to listen to Collider in its entirety. Download it from Amazon and iTunes.