Andrew Sa -- American Rough
On American Rough, Andrew Sa makes queer country music sexy and tangible, writes Josh Friedberg.
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“I’m looking all over town for guys that look like you,” sings cowboy crooner Andrew Sa on “You Turned Me On,” noting on the title track someone “eating the heart out of this room,” and the queer sound works just in time for Pride.
Many years in the making, Sa’s debut album, American Rough (Bloodshot), has been released, and it is one of the most sensual–and openly queer–country albums of the year.
His approach to country and Americana will remind listeners of Roy Orbison (whose “Blue Bayou” Sa has covered). American Rough caresses listeners with ghostly, reverb-heavy steel guitar and unobtrusive guitar, bass, and drums shadowing Sa’s quivering and ethereal tenor vocals at the center.
Sa’s city, Chicago, is all over this album’s lyrics and aesthetic, not only with its reverb-heavy production, somewhat reminiscent of older Bloodshot albums from Neko Case, but with its references to looking for a man on Halsted St. and taking the Red Line train anchoring audiences in the setting.
With or without this frame of reference, American Rough seduces: the lyrics are sexy as hell, focusing on bodies in motion: eyes, arms, blood, and much more. As a result, the album makes love and attraction sound tangible and physical in a way that most country music today shies away from, especially when it involves queer people.
Sa makes words flutter with his vibrato, and he augments the horn and string arrangements on songs like “You Turned Me On” and “Love Songs” with vocals that sound like cries and moans, adding to the album’s atmosphere. Unlike records by queer country artists like Chris Housman that eschew gender pronouns, Sa uses words like “guys” and “cowboys” so that listeners make no mistake where he stands.
In this way, Sa stands in the lineage of his friend, the late Patrick Haggerty from the pioneering queer country band Lavender Country and the subject of the tribute in “Lavender Cowboy,” perhaps the album’s centerpiece. The single is not as much of a musical showstopper as “You Turned Me On,” but the sound adds an appealingly slow-burning aesthetic to contemporary queer country, and I would highlight this song to hook a potential fan.
Throughout the album, the music captivates with understated intensity, Sa’s voice gliding and wafting in the mix. The sexuality and the degree to which Sa sounds in love manifests in everything on this record, including the lulling, spacious arrangements and production, notable on tracks like “Under You” and “Where It Lands.”
The songcraft is solid throughout, with songs that don’t always grab as much as insinuate. While the slow moodiness of the album might require some to listen more closely to absorb everything, this album is worth the investment. Sa is a musician to watch, and American Rough is a bold and distinguished debut from a significant emerging talent in the country and Americana fields.