links  https://samwelchmusic.com/ https://music.amazon.co.uk/artists/B074N2SXRM/sam-welch/ https://www.boomplay.com/songs/173922636 https://open.spotify.com/artist/67hWb0kt92swFcx61BdgXL Themes of spiritual transcendence and mental dysfunction aren’t usual subjects for popular music, unless you are Boston’s Sam Welch and you put them into the kind of techno music he is known for, or the pop of his new album, The Republic. The combination pop/alternative pop instrumentation and playful lyrics full of quirky rhymes makes even a song with a title like “My Darling Human Condition,” or “The Tenuous Affair,” a song about the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, not only interesting but fun. “I had a lot of fun creating it this year,” said Sam, who since 2017 has put out an album a year, mostly in a style he calls “transcendental techno vox.” The vox is still there in The Republic, in his play with harmonizing vocals, but this year he did something different. “I wanted to take as organic an approach as possible, trying to create some original instrumentation, combining different instruments and creating a different motif than I’ve done in the past.” “Linear,” for instance, a song about transcendence, a poppy tune with a swinging, rocking kind of beat with organ, brass, keyboards and something like a marimba or xylophone. I’m gonna take out a policyGonna sail on that shining sea, take out a policyAin’t nothing ever free, take out a policyThe wind is blowing to the lee, don’t worry about realityFour o’clock and it’s time for teaTake out a policy “‘Linear’ is a metaphorical thing about transcendence, basically saying that, when you think about death and stuff, it doesn’t make any sense. It’s not a linear progression.” Or, speaking of death, “My Room,” which he almost titled “The Mausoleum,” since the nominal subject is the decay of the grave. Soft, melodic bass and crooning vocalization turn the lyrics into something to think about rather than a horror movie. My room is filled with colored lightFor this I can’t give up the fightMustiness breathes with an ugly snoreThere’s more of life lying in store “I was originally going to call that one ‘The Mausoleum.’ It’s basically about physical decomposition. I figured ‘My Room’ would be a more upbeat title.” Hobbes, the 17th-century English philosopher whose formulation of life as “nasty, brutish and short,” is the subject of “The Tenuous Affair.” Old Hobbes was speaking his mindBut he might have been unkindPardon me sir, pardon me sirYour words are making me blind The intro is a kind of high-church vocalization, as might have been heard in the England of his time, with a swinging piano beat, tambourines and bongos and, lightly, the high notes of an organ, Hobbes’ ghost, perhaps, lurking in the background. “It feeds into the transcendence thing,” he said. “I’m advocating faith in positive things as opposed to sort of the stuff that Hobbes used to write about.” “That Cat,” on the other hand, is the psychological side. “It’s about what it means to have a nervous breakdown, and how there’s really no definition of, or way to categorize a nervous breakdown,” he said. He himself had what was called a nervous breakdown when he was 19 and now works as a psych counselor. Death in the valley, screaming down the alleyThis just ain’t no birth, but it also ain’t no finaleThat cat had a nervous breakdownbr...