At Glastonbury this summer, my number one priority was to see Sam Fender performing his song Seventeen Going Under as the sun went down over the Pyramid Stage on Friday. Legends are all well and good, but there’s something especially magical about sharing someone’s first real “moment” towards the start of an ascent to the A-list.
Not that the 28-year-old from North Shields has been short of special memories during his rapid rise to become one of Britain’s biggest guitar acts. A Brits Critics’ Choice award anointing him as music’s next big thing in 2019 was followed by the prize for British Rock/Alternative Act this year. Both of his albums have been UK number ones, the second one barely leaving the top 40 for most of the past year.
Huge outdoor shows include the July 15, 2022 set at Finsbury Park from which this live album comes. Released on vinyl and as a bonus disc in a deluxe edition of the Seventeen Going Under album, it’s a euphoric memento of his great year.
He doesn’t do anything radical to the 16 songs here when reworking them for the big stage. The saxophone still swoops in at the end of Alright’s crashing finale. Getting Started now has a barked “One! Two! Three! Four!” at the start that recalls his hero Bruce Springsteen but is otherwise faithful to the album track. What the live recording adds is confirmation, if it were needed, that Fender is a sensitive soul who spends the ego trip of a giant headline gig largely thinking about others.
The pummelling Spice, from his early EP Dead Boys, is interrupted while he urges fans to “take a couple of steps back” to protect fallen moshers. The emotionally overpowering song Dead Boys, about a spate of suicides in his home town, is dedicated to “our friends who aren’t with us any more.” As he reaches the point where he complains that he must “pretend to leave the stage” for an encore, he offers the grandiose ballad The Dying Light to “anyone who’s from a small town.”
It’s his knack for making personal struggles feel universal that has made him such a success. It may feel strange to hear this crowd singing along passionately to bleak lines such as “God the kid looks so sad” in Seventeen Going Under, but to paraphrase, a problem shared with 40,000 people is a problem greatly diminished. This recording is clear evidence that Fender’s 2022 was triumphant.
