Fricke's Picks: Samamidon

A Big Quiet All Is Well (Bedroom Community), by Sam Amidon — or Samamidon, as it says on the cover — is his deceptively ornate adaptation of ten traditional blues and folk songs. In an era of overheated Nick Drake comparisons, Amidon is eerily close to the real thing, singing in a fragile but certain tenor against the deep breath and soft sweep of Nico Muhly's orchestrations. A better analogy is the big quiet in Bjürk's Vespertine and Medulla albums. Producer Valgeir Sigurdsson worked on both records; he conjures a similar, pregnant resonance here around Amidon's voice and plucked-wire guitar — a public domain that is all inner space.