Sam Roberts grew up harboring the awesomely Canadian ambition of becoming a professional hockey player; apparently, he was already pretty far down the icy path to mangled teeth and sweaty mullets when he got the shit kicked out of him on the not-so-hockey-friendly streets of Hawaii. Roberts, then fourteen, was competing in an off-season triathlon, and (cue bad lighting) inadvertently wandered into the wrong neighborhood at a clearly inopportune time. Roberts later said that the last thing he heard before blacking out was, "Pound him, Vince." Permanently injured and subsequently inspired, Roberts started writing songs from his hospital bed (the first of which was titled, lovingly, "Keep Your Stick on the Ice") and quietly abandoned hockey for a slightly gentler pursuit. We Were Born in a Flame is Roberts' bouncy full-length debut, and it's a perfectly listenable follow-up to 2002's The Inhuman Condition EP-- any Shaq-inspired fear of the-athlete-gone-recording-artist should prove itself unfounded. With We Were Born, a now twenty-six year old Roberts shows off an impressive sonic range, flitting from scrappy punk throwdowns to billowing power-pop, and his thick, rocker warble is always infused with lots of bleeding-kid-in-the-gutter mettle.
The only problem is that Roberts' record ultimately fails to transcend the standard, been-there, guitar-based rock formula that ties each of his booming experiments together-- We Were Born in a Flame is often painfully straightforward. But if bone-tingling innovation isn't your bag, there's plenty of stuff to dig here: "Don't Walk Away, Eileen" is a belligerent electric punch, sorta reminiscent of the early, super-tense Who records, and "Brother Down" is a vaguely-retro acoustic stomp, with indulgently cheesy sing-along lyrics (always feels good to shout "I think my life is passing me by!") and pithy, foot-tapping percussion. "Where Have All The Good People Gone?" is an equally energetic, giggly cut ("The modern world is a cold, cold world/ And all I meet are cold, cold girls") with ample opportunity for head-bobbing and dopey grinning.
Roberts brazenly hollers shit like, "Yeah I bleed rock and roll/ And I would die for rock and roll," but it seems pretty unlikely that anyone will ever actually buy into his yelped assertions. We Were Born in a Flame is just a little too benign to really wave the badass flag with pride. But Roberts does thank Ted "hide-your-cat-and-girlfriend" Nugent in his liner notes, which, really, has gotta be worth something. Anything?
