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Album Review of Florence Sommerville: Endless Horizon
Acclaimed young British country music artist Florence Sommerville shows her talent and range on Endless Horizon, her full-length album featuring 12 songs plus 4 CD-only bonus tracks.
Sommerville has a classic country vocal sound, sort of. Her style has a hint of folk-country storyteller but with the carefree energy of a Stevie Nicks. Coincidentally, one of the “bonus” songs on her CD is “Landslide,” so she clearly leans into that persona. It’s a sound that comes off as intimate but with the power to entertain a big crowd from a festival stage. In fact, I’ve noted on Sommerville’s Instagram – yes, I follow most of the artists I add to my review queue on one or more social media – that she’s been a big hit on the festival circuit in the UK this summer. What else have I noticed on Sommerville’s Insta? Well, Endless Horizon won UK Country Album of the Year at the UK Country Music Awards this month. So I’m in broad company when I tell you this is a must-hear record from a talented artist.
photo courtesy of AFC Management & Publicity
The record itself is a broadly-pleasing collection of appealing songs. Well-written, frequently storytelling. Many of them come from the voice of a free spirit, and Sommerville presents herself as someone who fits that persona. Several songs are sung from an American perspective, though there’s a mention of London on one track that befits a UK country-Americana artist like Sommerville. At the same time, she’s convincingly American where the song calls for it. Some songs are fresh and young, while others are backward-looking stories that are sung with the wisdom and from a perspective of someone well beyond Sommerville’s years. All that is to say, she’s a helluva performer, a great storyteller, and not at all bound by age or geography in her ability to spin a convincing yarn.
I have so many favorites on this record, I barely know where to start. At the beginning, I suppose. First song “(I’ll Be Your) Best Broken Heart,” which kicks off with a big, swaying sound and leans into the whole free spirit thing: “I’m all in for the moment. I’ll be the best thing you have going. Even when I leave a mark, I’ll be your best broken heart.” Add softly wailing soft rock guitar mini-runs in the bridges and verses, and you’ve got potential hit number one right at the start.
“Fearless” is a fun, rowdy number – lyrically, at least, more mid-tempo by tempo – that celebrates youth and bad decisions. Next track “Overton” is a poignant storytelling song that does that cool thing where it’s told in the third person until late in the song when the story turns first-person, prompting the thought of “Aha! It was you all along! I knew it!” Of course, Sommerville’s too young for this to be her first-person song, but you forget that, since the character in the song is convincingly much older, looking back.
photo courtesy of AFC Management & Publicity
“Broken Pieces,” next, has a fiesty honkytonk feel, one that’ll have you swaying in your seat or, almost certainly, paying rapt attention if seeing it performed live.
Next up, “California” is slower, more wistful, seemingly exhausted. And yet, when it gets to the chorus, hopeful. And the chorus reveals that the story behind the song takes the same journey as the song’s sound itself takes from verse to chorus, then starts over with the next verse, though slightly less wistful and perhaps a little more reminiscent that the first verse. And the cool chorus lyric that begins with “I would drive down to California” and ends with “finding me without you.” As with the album opener, there are spots for crying, wailing soft rock guitar, and it’s appropriately used mostly in the bridges at first, though seemingly throughout the song by the end. It’s a soft, smooth, and wickedly cool tune.
“Out Where the Love Grows” is a warm, proud proclamation of small-town life and, in particular, of one’s hometown. There’s a country bounce and twang, musically, to this most country of all country sentiments, a song subject that’s immensely popular among those country music fans who’ve grown up in small towns, whether they’ve stayed or left. Sommerville’s entry into this category is impeccable, by the way. No surprise there. Ideal for a county fair. Or a soft, intimate, moderate-tempoed moment on a big concert stage.
photo courtesy of AFC Management & Publicity
“Silly Little Things,” next, lightens things up. It’s not as if the preceding song had a heavy mood. Not at all. And it’s not as if this isn’t reminiscent; it most surely is. But somehow it’s still a little lighter, even though it’s about changing one’s life. Like so much of this album – and this exceptionally talented artist – the songs are straightforward and, at the same time, a contradiction. It’s a nifty, clever song, though, quite likely some people’s favorite from this album.
Some of the songs to this point have been thoughtful and a little heavy, but for the first time the songs get darker on “Forget the Water”: “No there ain’t no similarity. Your ever-changing personality. I don’t know if I can live this way much longer. Forget the water, there’s something in the whiskey.” It’s a song about the contradictions. Sad, wistful, thoughtful, a song with a slow pace and careful voice inflections that tell not just a story but the emotions behind the story. It’s not the first serious song on the record, but it’s the first hard-swallow, lump-in-your-throat number. Whew!
After that, some relief is needed, and Sommerville provides just such relief with the playfully cheerful sound of “Love Me Then.” Oh, the subject is of love unrequited, but it’s fun journey through a love-not-quite and one of my (many) favorite songs along this Endless Horizon.
“Boots in the Rain” is a thumping, very country-sounding twanger of a travellin’ song, a free-spirited view of enjoying life wherever country music takes you. Oh, and this is the one song that clearly references England rather than the U.S. – it contains the lyric “it’s cold here in London,” something I mention for no real reason other than I wrote about it earlier in the review.
photo courtesy of AFC Management & Publicity
“Molasses,” next, opens with an almost ominous guitar chord, and the song, both stylistically and musically, keeps the listener off-balance throughout. I keep hoping this song is somehow connected to the Great Molasses Flood of Boston, but, alas, no. Rather, it’s a haunting song whose style matches its well-crafted lyrics.
The the final song is “Cut and Run,” a warm, summery, hopeful song about a mismatched romance. And perhaps Sommerville in the role of the romantic with the “gypsy mind” is what starts the Stevie Nicks comparison. It is the last song on the album, so it’s a mental picture that endures. And it is a damn fun song. More likely, though, it sets the table for the comparison, allowing the bonus cover on Nicks’ “Landslide” to steal the deal.
As for it actually being Endless Horizon‘s final song, that’s only sometimes true. It’s the end of the digital album, but the CD contains four acoustic “bonus tracks.” And four very cool ones, too.
The first bonus track, “Whisky in the Morning,” is a wailer in which Sommerville’s voice rises, falls, and connects with the song’s character, a downtrodden man whose day starts with, you guessed it, whiskey in the morning. The song’s delivery really connects with the lyrics’ depression and hopelessness. But, you know, in an appealing way.
Bonus song two is the aforementioned “Landslide.” Sommerville sings it with all the requisite fragile vocal nuance, accompanied by a soft, sparse strum.
“Love Me Then,” next, is the only duplicate song in the collection, an acoustic version of one of my favorite electric tracks on the disc. The acoustic treatment adds a different feel to the song, to the point that I’m not sure which one is my favorite.
The CD version of the album then closes with some Guns N’ Roses. Yes, really. Somerville delivers a tremendous cover of GN’R’s “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” convincing making the case that it always should have been a country song.
I look forward to one day, I hope, catching a Florence Sommerville concert here in the States. She’s an exceptional talent, stylistically serving up music with the potential for broad appeal, with impressive songwriting and storytelling skills, and the performance presence of a country music industry veteran. If you’ve not yet heard of Sommerville, give this album a listen. You’ll be glad you did.
