Red Scare – Release Date: 3/27/20

Solo folk/punker Sam Russo returns with his third full-length, Back to the Party, from Red Scare Industries. It’s been five years since we’ve heard new music from Sam and the title has me wondering if it’s a double entendre. Is this a return or does he have his back turned? Eagerly listening, Russo introduces himself gradually, with a somber cello at first, a building electric guitar and then switches to his trusty rhythmic acoustic chords. He contends with his own stagnation and breaks through his familiar parameters to reach for something more. But it isn’t always easy or feasible, and “The Window” successfully conveys this. It is only appropriate that this melodic song, laden with hooks, is the album’s highlighted single via music video.

Russo visits familiar motifs to his songwriting such as reconciliation and leaving, in “Good and Gone.” At his August 29th show at the GMan Tavern in Chicago, he laughingly clarified that the line, “and you can tell Ray I said fuck you / He can stick his job up his ass,” is not in fact about Ray Carlisle from Teenage Bottlerocket. His sincerity is cut with a crass brazenness, making sure the most serious of songs remain unpretentious and honest. “Darkness” serves as something of an interlude; the album’s shortest song with no chorus. Almost dreamlike, Russo laments in solitude, but not just physically. Rather, he recalls drowning as your friends surround you, and none of them notice. This is a sobering track of solemnity; evocative and deeply personal.

I believe one of the greatest songwriting talents a musician is capable of is the ability to vividly walk the listener through a lived scenario, so that we may experience it with every bit of detail as they did. Russo surrenders to that honest candor and achieves this. In “Anne,” the protagonist takes off on a train and the listener is taken on a lonesome, teary-eyed walk up the station’s stairs, feeling the freezing weather and chilling winds – a complement to the profoundly emotional lyrics. Who the hell is she? The second single is the album’s closer, “The Basement.” Russo ebbs and flows as he emotes, trading off between softly and loudly, and channeling a pop punk energy thus far unique to his songwriting style.

Back to the Party is an empath’s breath of fresh air. Russo delves deep into himself and does not wrap it up with a bow. Alas, I’m left wondering about the double entendre.

– Jason Duarte