From the start of Andrew Sa’s American Rough, it’s impossible not to be pulled in.
With the album’s opening number and title track, a curtain of balmy keys, sinewy bass, and throbbing horns parts to reveal an apparition: “He’s mean handsome / Can’t hardly be decent together / He’s American rough / Eatin’ the heart out of this room…”
This enticing figure, magnificently sculpted from Sa’s Orbisonian croon in just a minute and a half, lingers like a firm kiss throughout the rest of the country-folk singer-songwriter’s debut. His corded form is imprinted in the collection’s aching “Under You” and tangled up in the satin of “Your Whisper,” his presence offering a sure place to land as Sa takes listeners on a journey through the complexities of masculinity, the splendors of intimacy, and the commotion of longing.
