Depression and Dad rock: Sam Fender makes heroic anthems from hopeless situations – ABC News

Fans of Gang of Youths and Bruce Springsteen will find plenty to love about how this young Geordie bridges chest-beating bravado with bleak subject matter on his second album, Seventeen Going Under.

Content Warning: This article discusses suicide.

Sam Fenders debut album Hypersonic Missiles introduced him as a songwriter with skill, honesty, and a great love for anthemic rock. It impressed listeners and critics alike, debuting atop the UK charts and winning the Critics Choice Brit Award for its refreshingly meaningful slant on guitar music.

Not bad for a teen from the working-class coastal town of North Shields who admits he spent his youth getting stoned or into fights as he bounced between the lives of his separated mother and father.

The 27-year-old never shies away from chronicling his tough upbringing in his music, but his gift is in fusing grim truths into rousing, bombastic songs. His voice and presence stitch the intensity of his lyrics and music into fist-pumping anthems built for big crowds to sing along to, yet still hit you square in the heart.

Its all there in the opening title track to Seventeen Going Under, Fenders second album that does everything his debut did bigger and better.

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The track sweeps you up in its momentum as chiming guitars and propulsive rhythms build to an arena-sized wooah-oh-ohhhh sing-along. But that triumphant mood is built upon incisive lyrics about how anger is a sickness that Makes you hurt the ones you love you like theyre nothin.

What begins as a picture of teenage frustration blossoms into a detailed portrait of violence, toxic masculinity, nihilism, and the heart-breaking image of Sams mother weeping on the floor after an unsuccessful application for welfare.

Fender specialises in triumph-outta-tragedy and steadily-escalating songs that start with a flicker and roar into a flame, building to sustained climaxes in arrangements that grow outwards and upwards.

Its impossible to miss that Bruce Springsteen is still his biggest influence wailing sax solos, E Street Band revelry and all along with acolytes like The Killers and The War on Drugs. But Fender deserves to be every bit as big as those artists, and Seventeen Going Under could well propel him to be The Boss of his generation.

He sounds less like an imitator on this album because he pours so much of himself into his songs, digging even deeper into serious subject matter and surfacing with epic, emotive material.

No wonder Gang Of Youths have become close mates, even warming up arenas for Fender on what will be his biggest tour of the UK yet.

Over there, the native Northerner is already on a trajectory to superstar status. Just look at the way young festival crowds sing his songs like dearly-held classics - belting along to every word with the committed performer.

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Its been abject euphoria, Fender tells triple js Richard Kingsmill of his recent shows. Some of the biggest weve ever played Leeds Festival in front of 50,000 plus people? The most ridiculous thing Ive ever seen. Six different moshpits at one time!

Its a sight he sorely missed while trapped in the house last year due to COVID, eating chicken burgers and playing video games for a year, solid. And binge-drinking alone; But Im from Newcastle, so Im just a normal weekday drinker, he deadpans.

Being cooped up also meant he couldnt wander down the pub for inspiration from the local riff raff.

In Newcastle youve got the most unsubtle drug dealers kicking around, shouting about what theyve been up to, he explains. I used to get all of my stories from the illicit characters hanging around my hometown. But I havent had any of that.

An undisclosed health condition meant the musician spent three months pretty much alone, apart from the Zoom calls. So, to prevent going insane from lockdown, he started going to therapy.

That conjured up a lot of material, he reflects. It definitely helped. But they dont put a disclaimer on therapy: its not easy.

Its like the Spanish inquisition in your psyche, and youre sat there trying to figure out why youre being such a tit all the time. It takes honesty to get the most out of it.

The first record, a lot of it was pointing outwards and writing about people I knew. I found it a lot easier to be honest about strangers or friends because I could be honest about them and be completely critical as well. Whereas its quite hard to be honest and critical about yourself, because lets face it, we can all be a bit of a twat sometimes.

That sincerity fuels the albums defining moments. Get You Down does not paint a flattering picture of Fender, taking out his anger and self-esteem issues on an undeserving partner and realising too late that hes projecting his own feelings of contempt. I catch myself in the mirror/See a pathetic little boy he sings over and over.

[Its] that moment where youre becoming aware that youre letting insecurity get the better of you, he explains. Youre aware but you dont know how to fix it yet that transitional period.

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Spit Of You poignantly captures a father-son dynamic; how Fender is the spitting image of his old man, inherited flaws and all: the knotted up baggage and anger (smashing cups off the floor/And kicking walls through/ Thats me and you) and an inability to communicate any of it: I can talk to anyone / I cant talk to you.

It concludes with the moving image of Sam seeing his father breaking down at the funeral of his grandmother, planting a kiss on her body and realising with stark compassion: One day thatll be your forehead Im kissing.

These moments hit so hard because Fender manages to express something universal through these deeply personal experiences. You dont have to have specifically suffered what he has in order to recognise yourself and those you love in these songs.

Its a skill hes sharpened further on Seventeen Going Under, his writing becoming more detailed and economical just as his sound and production has grown more dynamic, his playbook expanding beyond just the surging Born To Run dynamics he does so damn well.

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The easy-going Mantra is content to float along breezy melodies as Sam offers sage advice to himself, Last To Make It Home slows things down and beautifully serves its role as the albums bittersweet widescreen ballad.

Long Way Off is a stomping state-of-the-nation address with cinematic strings and horns, while Aye picks up where the first albums White Privilege left off as an embittered everything is awful protest against class warfare. The woke kids are just dickheads, the 1% encourage us to hate the poor and any political allegiance is ultimately pointless.

In this grand scope, hearing Fender rise to the occasion to embrace the voice-of-a-generation mantle thrust upon him is encouraging, but hes far more effective at speaking to topics bigger than himself when hes tackling the more intimate and delicate subject of mental health.

Coloured by exotic strings and another huge chorus, The Leveller makes poetry out of the isolating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, lives and minds stung by the stillness of lockdown, Waitin in vain for the almighty crash/As little England rips itself to pieces, Sam sings. And the fear is the closest thing to fun that I have.

Its kind of a war cry against depression, he explains. Its me trying to rail against it; rail against falling under because so many of my close friends have fallen victim to their mental health.

Similarly, Paradigms reaches a touching coda of No one should feel like this, elevated by a choir of people from Fenders hometown who lost another friend to suicide last year.

The North East region the songwriter calls home has been dubbed the suicide capital of England, and its a grim fact hes been facing down ever since breakout 2018 single Dead Boys. Nobody ever could explain/All the dead boys in our hometown goes the chorus.

Those same fallen souls still haunt Sam on Seventeen Going Under, theres an unspoken understanding that the same all-too-common patterns of his rough upbringing - a youth spent aimlessly fucking, fighting and drinking - could have just as easily led him to be just another statistic.

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And those dead boys are always there/Theres more every year Sams sings explicitly on The Dying Light, the albums show-stopping closing track and spiritual sequel.

Sam admits the song was written when he was at his lowest, from the perspective of somebody whos considering taking their own life. But instead, they triumph over the darkness and decide instead to keep fighting - if not for themselves than for those they care most about.

The song rises from lonely evocative piano into a hopeful climax of thundering musical heroics as Sam declares:

Its a breath-taking finale that perfectly draws the curtain on why Seventeen Going Under is such a significant statement for its author, but also why Sam Fender himself is so important.

Hes the small town lad made good. Hes one of us, the kid with big dreams of being a guitar hero but he actually did it.

However reluctant he may be as some kind of generational spokesperson for disillusioned youth, Fender is not about to waste the opportunity afforded by slipping free from a system thats chewed up and broken so many like him. He wants to use his platform to make a difference the best way he knows now - with songs big enough to unite heaving crowds of kids. Capturing the sorrows we all sometimes struggle to articulate in soaring sing-alongs.

Musically, Seventeen Going Under doesnt make you work too hard for its rewards but like the best music does, it will most certainly make you think a little deeper about the world.

Sam doesnt have all the answers, nor does he pretend to. But what matters is he wants to be better, and hes damn well not afraid to try, no matter how many hurdles he has to overcome.

I wouldnt ever say that Im sorted but Im definitely better than I was, he tells tripe j.

We all have insecurities, doesnt matter how much work you do. But Im definitely, definitely further on than I was at the start of my twenties. I dont rip me cupboard doors off anymore, he laughs, so thats a good start.

Seventeen Going Under is out now via Dew Process. Hear Sam Fender chat with triple j's Richard Kignsmill about how therapy helped his songwriting and his relationship with his parents on 2021 here.

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Depression and Dad rock: Sam Fender makes heroic anthems from hopeless situations - ABC News