Sam Lowry

I've got a brick/You've got some windows/Just think of all the fun we could have: These are lines from one of the many angsty breakup tunes from Sam Lowry's down songs from the exile suite. The song is exactly what it is titled: "getting over (bitterness #2)," especially if you only focus on what's in the parentheses.\nThe album plays like a guy's journal the week or so after he's been ditched by his lady. It encompasses all of the egotistical mopeyness typically associated with anyone in this depression. The song "stretching the new skin" speaks for this album best: Yes, we all feel the effects/but only I suffer the causes/The truest thing you ever said was that I have a problem.\nIt's true. The guy has a problem, and he's willing to admit it in every track on the whole album. Now I don't necessarily have a problem with breakup rock. The whole "Oh I can't get a girl to like me!" emphasis in music can be appealing, especially to people like me who can relate to the problem at hand. It's just that when you have a record with 11 tracks of "Oh, woe is me" music, you get sick of it.\nSure, some of his lyrics are catchy, and some of the music actually has some quality to it. Lowry has a very Tom Waits-inspired style, and, like Waits, he shares this sort of cynical view of, well, everything. I think Lowry has promise, but he won't put out anything good until he can stop saying that he is, as he said in the first track of the album, "the weakest man alive." He needs to start doing what he says he's going to do in the song "apologies never heard."\nAnd I know you don't care/and you never will again/But just for the record/I'm going to be better. That speaks for both his music and his attitude. The album's nothing great. You can get the same out of a roommate with a long-distance relationship. But one of these days, when he gets out of his depression, Sam Lowry has the potential to make some good music.