Sam Russell and the Harborrats – Ocean Shores
(self-released, October 2021)
Seattle-based musician Sam Russell has spent the better part of a decade building a vast universe of anthemic, full-throated rock and roll. With his band the Harborrats, Russell bears witness to the unearthly awe of obsession, love, memory, lust, and doubt in songs that are both overwhelming and essentially innocent. He doesn’t waste his powerhouse crooning on riddles, obstruction, or abstraction; he gets right to the job of mining the deep recesses of the self to form connections and conjure jean jacket euphoria. There’s a song on his latest epic release, Ocean Shores, titled “The Kenosha Kid” that’s neither a put-on nor an awkward misstep – it’s gripping and thrilling, easily the best song ever written sporting the lyric “I’m a piece of processed cheese” before exploding into a crescendo of “ooh, ooh, ooh”s. Easily. Every crevice of memory and unsullied hope is grist for the mill of transcendence. Coming to terms with this idea is step one of yielding to the power of Sam Russell and the Harborrats.
Ocean Shores throbs with a heightened sense of epiphany seeded by Russell’s evangelical Christian childhood in Wisconsin and framed by his slow-burning rock and roll adulthood. Lyrics recall conversations that bring up memories which invite you to get lost in your own head. Every interaction in these songs, whether with his brother or a crush or an ex or some jaded scenester, feels crucial – a breathless confession or buzzed theory to make any kind of sense of the nature of love, the thrill of fantasy, and the weight of aging and loss. Ocean Shores, like pretty much all of Russell’s catalog, is interior, introverted music for people dying to connect with a university of lovers, brothers, bandmates and drinking buddies. “Cohorama Kool-Aid” tells an anecdote about talking to a woman at a wedding . . . singing “oh, we could’ve been so close” which sums up the record, and Sam’s whole project, in six words.
The memory, ambition, and disappointment of romance work overtime on Ocean Shores, to dizzying effect. Sam’s music is a perpetual magic machine, churning out moments of sorrow and bliss for age 7 or 13 or 24 or 37, like the movie Stand By Me cross-bred with the Up series from the UK. And this machine is relentless in its pursuit of connection, as evidenced by “Poetic Turn” with “I wish we could keep talking / until I find a way to describe / but you stop me after 3rd attempt / not letting me get to the seventh try.”
Given the chance, Ocean Shores vows to make a 70th or 700th try for connection, either through sprawling aural “liner” notes found on the bonus CD (yes, I still listen to CDs – don’t @ me) or the various Sam-ified covers of songs by Taylor Swift, Dua Lipa and Whitney Houston included in the maximal digital release. But like all things Sam, these covers are earnest and moved by the spirit – seriously, just listen to this:
Like always, Sam goes for it on that tune and he gets there, thanks in large part to his unflappable Harborrats, the mighty Aimee Zoe on drums and all-around-amazing-dude Ken Nottingham on bass (Ken also plays in my band, Virgin of the Birds, but his amazingness is known far and wide). Ocean Shores overflows with grand, lovelorn tunes that are so fundamentally human as to be both essential and beguiling. These songs burn with life and the throbbing heat that compels us to continue even when we have no idea what to do, where to go, or how to find somebody to go with us.
Skeptical that this music is so powerful and beguilingly good? See for yourself this Friday night at the Sunset Tavern when Sam Russell (celebrating his birthday!) and his hearty Harborrats join their brothers-in-arms Casey Ruff and the Mayors of Ballard and the Foghorns.