Moments in Timelessness

Music for the Soul Album ∙ Country ∙ 2025 Sam Barber Though he first found fame through his viral hit “Straight and Narrow,” Sam Barber proves he’s anything but a flash in the pan on this EP, which follows his 2024 full-length debut  Restless Mind . Anchored by another hit, “Man of the Year,” the seven-song collection charts a formative time period for the 22-year-old Barber, whose whirlwind rise to fame began in his late teens and is chronicled on  Restless Mind . Picking up where that album left off,  Music for the Soul  opens with its title track, which seems to serve as a mission statement for Barber’s blooming artistry as he sings, “Well, I know this ain't the bar song you wanna hear, but I make music for the soul.” “Nowhere Fast” is soulful and searching, as Barber tries on heartland rock to make sense of the major life changes he’s experienced in recent years, while songs like “Dust and Smoke” and “Same Sad Shit” play off the early-2010s-inspired folk-rock sou...

Restless Mind Album ∙ Country ∙ 2024 Sam Barber It’s a golden age for troubadours. Following the end of the bro-country era, a new generation of story-driven, acoustic-guitar-slinging singer-songwriters wearing their hearts on their sleeves took firm hold of the genre, birthing stars like Zach Bryan and Charles Wesley Godwin. Sam Barber is another formidable voice in this still-emerging canon, as he shows on this sprawling collection of songs written over the course of the 21-year-old’s five-year foray into music. Like Bryan, Barber worked with producer Eddie Spear, whose light but thoughtful touch keeps the ambitious, 28-song project from sounding repetitive. Anchored by Barber’s viral song “Straight and Narrow,”   Restless Mind   is a winding, sometimes surprising journey through dying relationships and dead-end towns, with appropriately spare, rough-hewn production. The record opens with “Man You Raised,” itself beginning with a voicemail from Barber’s mother that sets a ho...