The Best Music We Heard in Metro Phoenix in 2020
If anyone turned 2020's many lemons into sparkling lemonade, it was Sam Means. The musician and head of local merch company Hello Merch went from a planned reunion with The Format to releasing an excellent five-song EP, I'm Sorry. The project clearly owes something to Means' main band, and there's a kind of earnestness and heart-on-sleeve mentality linking both sounds. But from there, Means spins in '70s-style folk-rock (a la Stephen Stills) and '90s alternative (think Teenage Fanclub) for energetic jams on American politics and doomed love. If there are any downsides, the EP feels too brief...