Sam Fender & Olivia Dean – Rein Me In

Your thoughts on what the pronunciation of “tinnitus” should be? Sound off in the comments!

[Video]
[5.73]

Hannah Jocelyn: I left my first adult relationship a month and a half ago. Things moved fast, and it got so claustrophobic I knew I had to leave instead of keeping them hanging on my inability to commit (or, like, try to work things out as adults should do). What this song captures so well is realizing any further attempt at closure is self-flagellating, any hope for reconciliation is kaput, and there’s nothing you can do except know you hurt someone and try your best to not repeat that mistake. I struggled with this album, but I knew what song to reach for post-breakup. “Telling everyone how much I fucked it up/telling everyone but you how much I fucked it up” is bellowed the way Sam Fender bellows everything, but for once, the melodrama works. He’s clearly in on the joke, as the ridiculous chorus shows: “I’m working myself up to a nice warm bliss, all my memories of you ring like tinnitus.” That’s really just a knowingly overwrought masturbation reference, but the low stakes human drama is so much more effective than the songs where he tries to comment on the state of the world. All this is set to a jaunty saloon piano and a groove that reminds me of Travis’ post-Britpop hit “Why Does It Always Rain On Me”, which is unfortunately Hannah Kryptonite. Olivia Dean’s verse seems arbitrarily plopped in and poorly incorporated (just because her lyrics are harsh doesn’t mean the recording needs to be!), and yet she gives Fender the kick in the shins he needs, and I needed too. The man drives me nuts because for every masterpiece like “Seventeen Going Under” or “Remember My Name”, there’s something as misguided as “Aye”. This isn’t his best song, but it holds up an uncomfortable mirror in a way he’s never done before. Maybe if I shared Fender’s background, I would connect with all his songs the way I do this one. As long as he never writes “They even wrote all the Ten Commandments/They watched Jesus get nailed to the cross” again.
[10]

Alfred Soto: “I’m working myself up to a nice, warm bliss/All my memories of you ring like tinnitus” is worthy of New Order, though from the way he mewls the last word so it sounds like “tenderness” isn’t. Anyway, a strong arpeggiated hook and Sam Fender finally finding the strong post-Chris Martin tone to convey his intelligent thoughts on breakups and sex and stuff coalesce into a song worth replaying. He even risks a saxophonist.
[7]

Taylor Alatorre: Poor saxophone solo, having to retroactively attach some hard-bitten gravitas to the previous several minutes of jangly, grousing paralysis. It jolts my senses enough to make me to go back and listen for any narrative markers or hints I may have missed the first time around, of which aren’t any; when I get back, the sax solo is gratefully still there, spiriting me to the end on a steady gust of wind. We ask too much of our saxophone solos sometimes, expecting them to carry entire songs or conjure entire time-worlds, even when they haven’t been given a proper introduction or lead-in first. Sam Fender isn’t the worst offender in this, in part because he’s got the War on Drugs guy on hand to ensure it at least sounds cinematic enough to yearn to. Were that all sax solos could be afforded such a luxury.
[6]

Nortey Dowuona: I’m legit stumped. Both Olivia and Sam sing their pieces of the relationship at the core of this song: Sam mournful and sullen, Olivia earnest and forthright, each trying to get the other to see then accept what they both know to be true. Sam feels trapped and frightened of her adoration, and Olivia worried and frustrated by his reluctance. Their voices are warm and honeyed and blend perfectly. But Drew Mitchell’s drums are so lazy and awkward, slowing the song to a dry crawl and sitting in the middle with overdubs of lower-range takes that feel impassioned yet passive. Max Wolfgang, I am so sorry, you did your best with them both. Bluehat, they did you dirty.
[7]

Katherine St. Asaph: Growing up we used to joke that my dad’s favorite genre was “songs you can bob your head from side to side to,” exemplified in sound and message by “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.” You can certainly bob your head from side to side to “Rein Me In.” But you can’t really feel anything more emotionally fraught than doing you some talkin’ to the sun.
[3]

Will Adams: “Anything But Wet,” the final track of i_o’s posthumous album, is a devastating tech-trance song about trying to reach toward happiness when you’re at rock bottom — “yelling at the rain won’t get you anything but wet,” he sings. In the second verse, the album’s collaborator Lights steps in to give him tough love: “hear me out for once, for God’s sake, sometimes you just gotta follow the light.” It’s brutal in the context of both i_o’s passing and the cold, propulsive beat swirling around the two. This new version of “Rein Me In” featuring Olivia Dean does a similar trick; Sam confesses to being withdrawn emotionally, and she snaps him out of it: “I see the tears of a man too proud to reach for a hand.” This time, though, the arrangement is bouncy, shimmery from layers of fingerpicked guitars and sunny from an extended saxophone solo. Having previously been susceptible to Sam’s sincerity, I’m not sure why this doesn’t feel as effective. Maybe the music lacks the weight the i_o song has. Maybe it goes on a little too long.
[6]

Mark Sinker: Reined in? Rained off more like. Hints as ever that this is a smart fellow working hard at being this ungrabby — I don’t get it, but it’s not aimed at me.
[2]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: A confession: I’ve managed to avoid reviewing Sam Fender every time we’ve had him up for consideration. This is out of no great malice for the man — instead, I got the impression very early on that he was extremely boring, and decided that I had better uses for my time. On finally encountering his music, I find that I was incorrect in my first impression: he’s merely somewhat boring, and charmingly so at that! Here, Fender & Dean seek to create a decently skillful British approximation of “Dawns,” swapping that song’s Millenarian-Millennial yearning-doom for something slightly more hopeful. This is a perfectly low-stakes duet, two mid-range vocals over jangly guitars sounding like the first rains after a forest fire.
[7]

Dave Moore: I think this is the first time I’ve actually heard Sam Fender, who, thanks to my own peculiar streaming walled garden algorithms, I always confuse with Sam Gendel, a recurring name in the lightly weird jazz scenes that I encounter. Would this sound better against experimental saxophone loops? Should Fender switch out his rhythm section for Louis Cole and Sam Wilkes like Gen Hoshino did? Should all slow music just knock it off and be fast already? (Yes.)
[4]

Jel Bugle: Sam is like a cool Ed Sheeran! Heaven knows what he’s singing about; I am beginning to think I have some kind of mental block when it comes to lyrics (unless they are basic). Olivia is a bit clearer, something about going home. It’s a nice bit of radio friendly song, aside from the subtle nod to Freak Scene, this song is far far away from Freak Scene. Let’s give them a [7] and hope they work things out.
[7]

Ian Mathers: God, he’s gotten boring, hasn’t he?
[4]