Whatever reason there is for it, a surge of nostalgia has overwhelmed music in the last two years. Not just their clamour for more music from the old hands of the last generation but a reliance on it as an emotional tool. Audiences still feel for those bits and pieces of music which soundtrack their life, and rightly so. We experience through those songs what no other experience can provide. Assessing the weight of those moments on the upcoming song Nostalgias Lie, Sam Fender has once more made a culturally effective commentary with his flourish of homegrown joys. Within all styles of music, contemporary or otherwise is a moment or memory we will connect with and, later on in life, use as a crutch for why we love or loathe it. While Fender is not criticising us for doing so, he is aware of its purpose and uses Nostalgia Lies as a tool to try and understand it.
Expected highs are found within. A flourishing guitar momentum which has carried Fender through his earliest works is heard here, as is a neat inclusion of backing vocalists and all these new flutters of instrumental flavour. In nostalgia lies a death of the contemporary self. So few artists, even fewer people, are capable now of moving themselves on from the comfortable rut of familiar tones. It is why so many bands run the course after just a decade of being around. Few hold the longevity to last on, and while Fender still has a way to go in this game of unending career highs, Nostalgias Lie does well to distance himself from the sharp reflections of Seventeen Going Under. He still uses his upbringing and location as a source of interest and influence but there is no sense of living the good times through writings related to it. It is quite the opposite for Fender.
What Fender looks for with this song initially is a sense of safety, and it does not take long for Nostalgias Lie to reveal this feeling is not in the past. Those same bands who provided security for audience members alienated by the sudden surge of new ideas in familiar genres are also carving a route through the future. Blur, Pulp, all of those returning greats have toyed with their past and realised the future is that much brighter. Fender realising this around the time of building up to his third album is a hint at where he plans on taking listeners. But nostalgia is not a lie to discard entirely, as Fender reveals in the latter stages of this song. We learn from the past and the endurance needed to take a message from it, yet run away from its infectious influences, is a bold topic to study. Fender does well.
He does more than dissect it and pairs it, as well as ever, with some swinging guitar joys and a sensible range of additional instrumentals. These moments may define Fender for some while yet but nostalgia is not the lead cause. His talent is continuous and has spread from colloquial championing to a man sincere in his success and thankful for it. Listen in to those final moments, the spinning and laughing of a songwriter who values, above all, the delicacy of this current moment. Nothing is certain bar nostalgia and Fender, while finding new routes in capturing the experiences of his life, seems to have sworn off the past as a memory to learn from, not live in.
