Sam Outlaw

Tenderheart SIX SHOOTER/THIRTY TIGERS. CD/DL/LP

Intriguing second album from the LA cowpoke Sam Outlaw’s debut release, Angeleno, produced with the aid of Ry and Joachim Cooder, won a UK Americana Award. Tenderheart is, perhaps, a tad more introspective as the Californian reflects on how success has since changed his life. The birth of a son, the constant tour grind, both have brought a sense of what is important, made evident on mariachi-tinged Everyone’s Looking For Home. Outlaw doesn’t deliver six-pack sagas, instead he offers Bottomless Mimosas as a morning pickme-up. If Trouble has him flexing his muscles and All My Life whoops it up in more traditional country manner, you get the sense that he’d much rather dispense the thoughts evident in the title track or the reflective gem that is Bougainvillea, I Think; a half memory of a former neighbour, her name long forgotten but her floral backdrop still recalled.