Patrik Fitzgerald was a one man Punk Rock band, the first guy I remember being tagged with the label "the Punk Poet". Before signing with a major label and releasing this album he made 3 fantastic EP’s for Small Wonder Records, “Safety Pin Stuck In My Heart EP”, “The Backstreet Boys EP” and “The Paranoid Ward”.

These EP’s bought him major label attention and he signed with Polydor to make “Grubby Stories”. The bulk of the album is Patrik and his acoustic guitar but on 7 of the 17 songs he plays with a band including Robert Blamire of Pentration, John Maher from Buzzcocks and producer Pete Wilson.

The songs are mostly very short. Only 4 on the whole album clear 3 minutes and of the first seven songs none of them clear 2 minutes. The highlight of the album for me is “All The Years Of Trying” a proper epic at just over 4 minutes ! It features bass, drums and piano/keyboards and tells the tale of a failing musician who finally has the hit, finishing on the repeated line “Now you are a suck-sess”…autobiographical ? Maybe but Patrik never had that elusive hit (although there’s a song here called “When I Get Famous” so maybe he really wanted to be). “Ugly As You” and “Nothing To Do” mirror the themes of songs from the EP’s; “Adopted Girl” is the first of the band songs, it doesn’t veer far from the acoustic songs; “My Secret Life” is a little kitchen sink drama; “Little Fishes” equates life to being the proverbial little fish in a big pond. Songs about the concerns of the time as reflected via Punk.

I loved the EP’s, there’s not a song here as good as “Safety Pin…”, “The Backstreet Boys” or “The Cruellest Crime” from those EP’s but this album takes me to a time and place and it’s a great reminder that record companies used to take a chance on stuff like this. I was lucky enough to see Patrik live when he opened for The Jam in 1978. I’ll always remember that tiny little figure on the huge Birmingham Odeon stage in front of a partisan Jam audience while I strained to hear the songs I knew from his EP’s. But I got to see him. He’s still making music, he released an EP in 2021, and long may he continue to do so.

Make It Safe - https://youtu.be/oWKVxtQY6T4

So there I was one Saturday morning 18 months or so ago driving in to work before 8am listening to our local BBC Station, Radio Shropshire. A record starts up completely unannounced, nice intro I thought; I like this singer, no idea what he’s saying but I like it; then the drums kick in and I’m bopping along in my seat and by the time the horns kick in I’m sold and I’m bouncing outta my seat (don’t worry I was on a quiet back road) thinking “who the hell is this ?”. 

Thankfully the normally useless presenter (I only listen to the station for news, traffic reports etc.) informed me it was Sam Fender and “Seventeen Going Under”. Now my friend Chris up in Newcastle had been rattling on about Sam Fender for a long time. I’d watched a documentary he’d done for the BBC about Lindisfarne’s great songwriter Alan Hull but I’d not got around to listening to his music. To be honest I was at a point where I’d given up on any new music with anything to say even getting close to getting through to me (The Enemy, Sleaford Mods, Idles…yawn…heard it all before, plagiaristic nonsense) so to find this young man who could write a song and had a way with words and something to say that was worth listening to was a revelation. After Chris assured me it wasn’t a one song flash in the pan deal and everything else he did was just as good, I ordered this album. 

This albums title song (track 1 side 1 perfectly setting expectations) is one of the best things I’ve heard in many, many (MANY) years. At its heart it’s a bloody great song and then Sam Fender lays out his life story for you, about growing up, about how he became who he is, about his Dad and his Mom, about his friends and all their troubles. And still he manages to make it into a something you want to be a part of, a communal experience in song. It’s remarkable. 

One day I went down a YouTube rabbit hole watching videos of Sam playing live. Seeing him and his audience communing over these songs and their messages pretty much restored my faith in “the kids”, there’s hope that they haven’t all been ruined by “Britain’s X Factor has no Voice or Talent” homogenised shite.

Like his debut “Hypersonic Missiles” many of the songs here address uncomfortable subjects, but there’s light here too. I don’t want to bore you with descriptions of individual songs again. Take it from me if you want, or don’t if you don’t, this is a bloody great record. Were it not for Cult Figures “Deritend” I would definitely have had this as my favourite album of 2021 and I’m not sure sometimes that this wasn’t it anyway.  If just one person came and told me they’d listened to this record because of what I wrote here I’d be made up. “Canny chanter but he looks sad” may be how Sam Fender sees himself, I can’t wait to hear what the canny chanter does next.

Seventeen Going Under - https://youtu.be/WAifgn2Cvo8

Although this is Sam Fenders 1st album it was the second one I heard. The reasons for that will be explained in the next installment. This album was released in 2019 when Sam Fender was 25 although he released his first single, “Play Dead”, independently in 2017. I bought this one after being blown away by his next album.

Sam Fender’s superpower is to be able to write songs about some really grim subjects but to write the song in such a way that they draw you in cos they are so bloody good. Sam has said of the title track

Its main focus is on the world around the narrator, who is a complete tin foil hatter... Amongst all the chaos is love and celebration, there is this glimmer of hope that runs through the song, a little notion that no matter what happens, these two people are gonna have a fucking good time regardless of the tyrants that run their world, and regardless of the imminent doom from these 'Hypersonic Missiles'

It’s not exactly light hearted stuff but the song itself is so good you get drawn into it, you find yourself singing along with the obvious singalong bits and that’s the way the message gets through. “The Borders” (reportedly the writers favourite song on this album) is a harrowing tale of two boys who grew up together and grew apart set to an almost Krautrock Motorik rhythm; “Will We Talk” is a glorious Springsteen influenced pop song about one night stands with a beast of a chorus; “Play God” is set in some Orwellian world and was inspired by the onset of Brexit and Trump’s rise in America; "White Privilege" addresses that thing we have just because of our skin colour, whether we like it or not, Fender has said that his white privilege "has affected my success, definitely, white boy with a guitar, fucking great, original, here comes another one.”

So you can see, not exactly moon and spoon and June, he’s got a lot to say about some uncomfortable subjects. Yet to watch him live (which I’ve only done via YouTube BTW) and see him and his audience lock into the chorus of “Will We Talk?” or “Saturday”, a classic weekend song in the vein of “Friday On My Mind” with a chorus of “If Saturday don’t come soon I’m gonna lose my mind”, is to see something akin to the nights I spent roaring along to The Jam and soaking up what Weller had to say back then. 

He won a Brit Award for this album which he donated to the pub where he was discovered and they use it as a beer pull. Sam Fender writes great songs, he’s got something to say and says it in a way that makes you want to listen. More power to him I say. 

Will We Talk ? - https://youtu.be/O1lAx0ruzQk (Live at Reading Festival)