Andrew Sa grew up listening to ’90s country music in Fremont, California, learned to sing in front of a crowd at a young age for his mom’s karaoke business, got a taste of queer performance and presence through the music of k.d. lang, Elton John, and Rufus Wainwright, drifted up through San Francisco and Portland, and washed up on the shores of Lake Michigan in Chicago, firming up his songwriting acumen at the the Old Town School of Folk Music. Honed by several years of performing at queer-focused acoustic showcases in Chicago, he’s now releasing his debut album on Chicago’s Bloodshot label. American Rough is a triumph.
Yes, the songs on American Rough subvert the entrenched hetero normative tropes of country music. But that seems like just a minor detail with songs this beautifully written and realized. Production by indie folk country artist H.C. McEntire and the playing of some choice collaborators puts these songs in their best light, but Sa’s songwriting and his emotive crooning (think Jimmie Dale Gilmore via Rufus Wainwright) are the real secrets to success.
The lead single “Lavender Cowboy” is a tribute to Sa’s late friend and mentor, the gay country music pioneeer Patrick Haggerty. It can also read as a statement of emotional entanglement with a somewhat idealized masculine gay figure, a scenario that winds throughout the rest of the album’s 10 tracks.
That figure is introduced in the title track, which comes first, a “mean handsome” guy that Sa finds himself drawn to, sometimes maybe against his better judgment. “I’m under you, throw your clothes under my table … rest your lips upon my brow,” he croons hopelessly in “Under You” (by his longtime collaborator Liam Kazar) as Allyn Love’s pedal steel moans its cautionary whine. In the sad waltz “Gorgeous Things” he’s whispering endearments to someone who isn’t his to love, Macie Stewart violin highlighting the forbidden emotions: “Wish I didn’t have to let you go / We shouldn’t be alone together / But I don’t want to leave your light…” In the swampy “You Turned Me On” he admits “I’m lookin’ all over town for guys that look like you” as a horn section comments.
Nowhere does McEntire’s production bring a song to greater emotional heights than in “Love Songs,” the first verse accompanied only by piano, with pedal steel, bass and drums moving in on the first chorus, and then rising in a crescendo of horns and strings. The final two tracks “Fightin’ To Be Fightin’ ” and “Where It Lands” are the least “country” of these songs, leaning more into indie folk and eschewing pedal steel and fiddle. There’s not a wrong note anywhere, though. American Rough the album is full of deeply romantic love songs sung from the heart and presented impeccably. Yes, they’re gay love songs, but they’re also universal in their sentiment and appeal. A truly amazing debut.
(Bloodshot, 2026)
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