Amos Lee spent the years before 2024's Transmissions exploring the work of his influences, including Chet Baker and Lucinda Williams. He brings all this experience to this album, balancing ragged folk intimacy with Baroque pop. The album opens with "Built to Fall," a literate song that starts with a piano and vocal passage before adding backing vocals and strings. Piano features a lot on Transmissions. On the gospel song "Carry On," Lee sings gentle harmonies against a spinning keyboard and banjo and pedal steel. He also makes bold creative moves on the '70s ballad "Madison," where he sings in a falsetto evoking Harry Nilsson and David Bowie. The country and folk-rock of "Darkest Places" and "Hold Tight" are beautiful and straightforward. They show the influence of The Band and Neil Young. These songs show Lee still contrasting his own sadness with a wider, more universal feeling. They are full of images that stay with you. In "Darkest Places," he describes an artist feeling adrift in a society on the brink of collapse. He sings, "I've been waiting for a stranger to come and save me." With Transmissions, Lee has made an album that's both cosy and daring, one that reaches for connection.
