I’m not sure how he does it, but “Holiday,” the new one from Sam Burchfield, sounds at once the most recognisable piece of pastoral folk-pop from decades ago and a just-released, under-the-radar, bedroom-indie destined to be a classic when it is reappraised years down the line. It should be massive now, but the world, at least the pop world as we know it today, isn’t ready for anything this effortlessly cool; they just wouldn’t understand it. How could it?
Its charms are simple; its colors are both day-glo and delicate, its delivery spacious and immediate. It is infectious, creative, and sounds both nostalgic and forward-thinking – the exact opposite of everything that the holier-than-thou, marketing meeting-driven, music-by-numbers, zeitgeist-surfing, cult of celebrity pop world has become.
And, having just trashed the landscape that it needs to find a home in, I find its final refrains even more powerful, even more poignant “I think it’s time for a change…” Indeed, it is. And this could be it, or at least the catalyst.
This is my first encounter with Burchfield’s music (totally my fault, but there are only so many hours in the day), and after listening to this gorgeous track, actually many times over, I checked out his previous singles. It is safe to say that I am totally on board; consider me sonically smitten.
But better still, a new album, Nature Speaks will be along in a couple of months. This, his sixth album, finds his music stripped-back and him focused on life’s essential and most rewarding aspects —a collection of songs shaped in the quiet upheaval of new fatherhood, a period of shifting priorities, reappraisal, and a reckoning with what truly matters.
Given how quickly I fell in love with “Holiday,” it’s an album that can’t come soon enough.
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