Sam Moss Announces "Swimming" LP & Shares Title Track

There’s a photograph of Sam Moss taken several years ago through an elaborate stained-glass window of a 170-year-old church turned venue in the Catskills. Sam’s on stage and framed by the corner of the lower half of the window, which is open on a tilt. It renders him diminutive and slightly out of focus, but the eye seeks and finds him, fixing him in view.

I can’t hear Sam’s music without this photograph coming to mind. (I admit that I took it.) He’s an excellent guitarist, a serious and thoughtful songwriter, and a confident, at times daring, singer. Yet all of Sam’s records—and most of all his newest, the exquisite Swimming—han aconseguit construir ajustos hàbils i eficaços per a la recerca rigorosa de cançons —comptes i baralles amb temor i meravella, temor i desesperació, fragilitat i resistència— que aconsegueixen expandir-se molt més enllà del marc de Sam Moss sense perdre-lo al paisatge. Ell pot donar la impression increïble que està habitant els seus discos en algun moment, tot i que són les seves actuacions de les seves composicions, que són, òbviament, l'eix central al voltant del qual giren. Sam pot—Sam fa—cantant “Jo vaig tenir...”, “Jo vaig sentir...”, “Espero...”, “Jo intento...”, “Jo... ball”, etc., però que I-ness—el stock-in-trade del compositor, que sovint creix cansat amb la seva  

But I can listen to Sam’s records over and over. They don’t wear out their welcome. He’s a modest and very hospitable host. I’m inclined to attribute this at least partially to his Yankeedom—New England-born, although he resides in Virginia now—and the particular, peculiar granite reserve that comes with that territory, though I’m also on guard against demeaning his abilities with place-based romanticism. I imagine I hear that, like Emerson, Moss’ “music’s in the hills,” but those would be as much Central Appalachia as Monadnock: redolent of rarer air in general. So it’s not site-specific, it’s Sam-specific. He's a writer of generous songs and a maker of gracious records. As it happens, the songs are terrific. So are the records. Swimming is his best yet. - Nathan Salsburg

Swimming” was written one summer within earshot of the Atlantic Ocean, but I am not a particularly good swimmer and it is perhaps unsurprisingly not a song literally about swimming. I guess it may take its inspiration from my mediocre swimming abilities, but it is really more of an incomplete treatise on holding contradictions within the self. I don’t know that I’ve ever written a song that so plainly states its thesis in the chorus, which makes me somewhat uncomfortable.

Com totes les cançons d'aquest àlbum, "Swimming" va arribar a la vida amb l'ajuda de la banda que m'envoltava. El grup bàsic per a aquesta sessió d'enregistrament es va reunir específicament per a això, i es va compondre de persones amb les quals no havia jugat mai abans. Aquell grup -Isa Burke, Sinclair Palmer i Joe Westerlund- va crear un bell equilibri entre la paciència i l'aventura mentre seguíem aquestes cançons en viu amb un mínim de repeticions. Hi havia un profund sentiment de confiança a l'habitació que va córrer entre tots nosaltres i Alli Rogers i Missy Thangs (l'equip d'enginyeria) que es va asseure al centre de tot això.