Kevin Bronson on January 6th, 2022

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Canadian singer-songwriter Sam Weber already had a ton of songs — and miles — under his belt when he moved to Los Angeles a few years ago. He’d released several albums and EPs of stripped-back songs by the time he made a proper studio album, 2019’s “Everything Comes True,” with producer Tyler Chester.

Weber is prepping the follow-up, “Get Free,” out Feb. 4, though it didn’t necessarily materialize as planned. “I wrote most of this music before the lockdown happened,” Weber says. “We wanted to go into another beautiful L.A. studio with another super band to record these new songs, but when all the plugs got pulled, we were sort of left holding nothing but the material. My partner Mallory Hauser was keen to rally and share production duties with me to make the most of what we had, which was liberating somehow: to have this logistical ceiling on how we could record or approach these songs in our living room. We were forced to be as creative as possible with what we had. I think it was the best thing that could have happened to us.”

Those two, along with drummer Danny Austin-Manning, did most of the recording at the coup0le’s Hollywood apartment. Griffin Goldsmith of Dawes plays on two tracks, and Madison Cunningham and Jacob Weil contribute background vocals on album highlight “Here’s to the Future” (stay for Henry Solomon’s horns, too).

Throughout, Weber’s subtle twists on the ’70s-styled troubadour aesthetic sacrifice nothing for emotional expansiveness or lyrical acumen. “Don’t Cry for Me,” for instance, is a jaunty song that puts part of L.A. life in a crucible: “Sleepin’ in a back hour, East L.A. / Little jasmine trellis on the garden gate / Those who do believe in fate / will never tell you why,” he sings, before bearing witness to a man overdosing on drugs in the next verse.

It’s but one moment, musically and lyrically, that makes Weber hard to pigeonhole. It’s worth getting free to find others.

||| Stream: “Here’s to the Future,” “Already Know” and “Money”