Album Review: AM’s ‘Future Sons & Daughters’

AM

Future Sons & Daughters

(FILTER US RECORDINGS)

[Rating: 4 stars]

If we were to, say, compare AM’s sophomore release Future Sons & Daughters to some mode of transportation, it would be something like a sonic vessel, transporting listeners across a sometimes tropical, otherwise Western-tinged, peaceful but swinging sea of cross-genre waters to a synaesthetic land of sunny melodies and easy beats. Don’t have confused senses? Fear not, you don’t have to be a true synaesthete to hear a vivid and colorful experience. Songs like opener “A Complete Unknown” and “The Other Side” beg for a bright treatment, while others like “Darker Days,” which sounds like a Jeff Tweedy outtake, play in more subdued hues. What really makes the album, though, is that AM, as would a skilled painter a la Vincent van Gogh or, of course, Bob Ross, knows just how to blend these tones together to create a truly spectacular musical mosaic.

Like a mosaic, the makeup of Future Sons & Daughters might sound choppy on paper, but the big picture shows it to be a surprisingly cohesive study in variety– that one album channels ‘60s California pop (“Grand Opinion”) as easily as it does modern alt-country (“Fortunate Family Tree”) says a lot of the Tulsa-born musician’s talents. It’s hard to pin down exactly what genre best fits AM, but who really cares—why waste mental capacity on labels and boxes that could be better spent listening? Future Sons & Daughters is worth every bit of the attention you give it, and then some. Each time you give it a spin you’re bound to come across something new, and that, folks, is the mark of a great album.