Sam Burton’s Fairweather Friend proves that an old trick done well is better than ten new ones

The templates and aesthetic he draws from on his third album are about as old as the concept of popular music itself, channelling the canyons around Los Angeles, top pickers in 1960s Nashville studios, and smoke-filled Greenwich Village folk clubs. Assisted on some tracks by co-producer Jonathan Wilson, who knows a thing or two himself about reviving the glory days of West Coast swoon, the LA-based Palestinian–American musician reaches for new levels of emotional resonance with an authority that instantly shuts down claims of derivative recycling.

Granted, we’ve been here before: Burton’s deceptively simple songs are ultimately folk songs, occasionally tinged with country, at times channelled through classic rock and American roots music. The warm and homely arrangements never push Burton’s richly resonant, melancholy voice and rippling acoustic guitar out of the driver’s seat. There are hints of Bob Dylan’s New Morning, early albums by Gordon Lightfoot, and perhaps Neil Young’s Comes A Time as well, especially once the wail of pedal steel enters the frame.

During the startlingly assured solo acoustic lament "Lilac Man", echoes of past masters of wounded but unbowed nocturnal introspection lurk over the proceedings (Fred Neil and Tim Hardin come to mind), like a folk-rock bat signal projected over a rain-splattered cityscape.

The foundations of Fairweather Friend lie in the aftermath of a bad car crash Burton was involved in with his fellow musicians. This led to a period of living on the move, with Burton eventually winding up working on a farm in northern California, channelling his guilt over an accident that wasn’t his fault into these eleven songs.

Unfailingly downcast but also resolute, they somehow combine deep reflections on the fleeting and temporary nature of everything ("Fairweather friend, you know it rarely lasts") and locating a sense of freedom in what is essentially rootless solitariness ("You could lose everything and be free again") with lyrics of, at times, almost haiku-like sparseness.

Most importantly, the tunes uniformly give every impression of being lost classics from the late '60s / early '70s – when the singer/songwriter idiom was arguably at its ripest – that have been freshly unearthed from an acetate picked up from a musty garage sale, while never quite sounding like anyone but Burton operating in the here and now.

Fairweather Friend peaks with the impossibly pretty, yearning-fuelled twang of "Start Over", which pairs Burton's longing with pre-emptive premonitions of inevitable disappointment with lines like "Her love is plain and it quickly fades." Here, he achieves the ultimate pinnacle of a songwriter’s craft by actually matching the gravitas of the classics he is channelling. Slather its wounded and melodically rich majesty in strings, and you can easily imagine Elvis or Glen Campbell cutting this one as a single in their pomp.