By Spencer Murphy:

I don’t know the first thing about pioneering prog-rock trio Rush, but I have a hunch that my man Sam O.B. might. Make no mistake – Sam’s music doesn’t sound like Rush, and he’s never mentioned them to me, but given the fact that the man has a near-encyclopedic understanding of the last 60-or-so years of recorded music – like on some Long Island Long Island Rainman shit – I think it’s more than likely that Alex Lifeson et al have a tiny office in the tower of song that Sam has spent most of his life trying to build. His estimable collection of LPs is a bit like that immense radio telescope where Jodie Foster works in Contact: it’s a beacon, it’s a portal, it’s an outlet for (and evidence of) a freakish obsession, a gotta-see-it-to-believe-it vehicle for unraveling the mysteries of the universe. The meat of it (the collection, not the radio telescope) consists of Chicago House, obscure French Touch Disco, 70s West Coast AOR, 90s Rap, scratchy Afro-pop, and compilations of folkloric music from around the world. It’s the product of a couple decades’ worth of accumulation, by a man who feels at his core that despite all his digging to date, something remains hidden out there in the wax, just waiting for him to find it.

…so it’s safe to assume that there’s a copy of Rush’s 2112 in there somewhere. And moreover: that Sam knows it front-to-back. I say this all to say – as I listen to Too Many Humans…Not Enough Souls, I’m reminded over and over of something Geddy Lee said, in his 2014 PBS interview, with author Michael Chabon:

“Originality is when you have so many influences that…you can’t tell them anymore; you can’t see them anymore—they’ve all melded.  And as your confidence rises in your craft, your personality steps in front of those influences and…that forms your voice.”

This is the final-form energy Sam embodies on TOO MANY HUMANS... The album doesn’t sound (specifically) like any other music, but it sounds plenty familiar. It sounds like waking up, like steam, like meditation, like healthy houseplants, like tea. It sounds like a good feeling that you don’t fully understand, like drugs, like twilight, like the cover of Diamond Life, like the extra couple beats in the electric slide. It sounds like a danger that you go looking for, like the Balearic Islands or Berlin or Bushwick. It sounds like the United Stress of America, and any avenue you can travel to transcend it. 

Too Many Humans… is his second full-length, and the follow-up to 2017’s Positive Noise.
Returning here to help bring the vibes are a handful of longtime collaborators: Ex-Antibalas drummer Miles Francis, vocal virtuoso Elisa Coia and synth wizard Photay – all producers in their own right. They’re joined by a handful of NYC’s best and brightest: guitarists Armando Young, Bryndon Cook (of Starchild & The New Romantic), and Davy “Space People” Levitan, keyboardist-to-the-stars Jake Sherman, drummer Vishal Nayak, trumpeter Kenny Warren, mix engineer Andrew Lappin, and on bass, me, Spencer Murphy – all, again, producers in our own right. Sam’s sheer ability to get us all pointed in the direction of his vision and keep us moving says something about his own command of the role. Or, maybe it says something about how we all feel about the clarity of his voice, or just his gumption. Making work in the face of all that the world is, is itself absurd, and the determination to do so is admirable. Every album is someone’s Fitzcarraldo: if you can pull the ship over the hill, and do so with a smile on your face, you’ve mastered something in yourself. And Sam loves to smile. 

Most of the rest of us have already lost it, lost something, lost someone. I’m not sure mayoral rhetoric is the springboard that anyone is asking for to propel them over their last psychic vault-horse, into that final stage of post-pandemic grief, the full and honest acceptance that is necessary to actually move on. Tightening further the white-knuckle grip you have on your own life probably isn’t the solution. On the contrary, as Sam sings on “Indian Summer,,”  “The answer’s clear as day / we all need to give ourselves a break.” Listener, you probably need to hear that (shit, I do). Moreover, on “Welcome to Waste,” the album’s opener, he asks us to, “…glorify love, for a change…it’s all you have.” This work is a plea for the listener to turn off, tune out, and drop into the present moment. On Sam’s records, this isn’t an abstract idea, and it’s not naïve sentimentality on his part. It is practical advice and has been a defining component of his work for the better part of the last decade. “Love and life are deep, maybe as his skies are wide.” Ah, that’s Rush again - but the point stands.