In 2020, Samia launched a report so heart-wrenching, it was orphic indie pop wrought with darkish musings that felt akin to the social panorama it was launched onto. In some ways, The Child spoke to Gen-Z tradition completely on the apex of COVID, as songs like “Match N Full,” “Pool” and “Large Wheel” sought to make sense of betrayal, sensuality and relationship dynamics by way of reflection and diaristic lyricism. The imagery on the report so usually tapped right into a wealthy, fluid realism that teetered on the sting of esoteric. On her latest album, Honey, she makes her songwriting extra private than ever earlier than, punctuating her pedigree of delivering frank, stunning music that gnaws away on the components of humanity left to be untangled.
Three years in the past, Samia was lauded for making music that was profound and private but broadly accessible. The Child was superbly assembled, although she wasn’t the primary musician to take her deepest feelings and put them into the world so others can name them their very own. However The Child proved that the way in which she interacted together with her environment had an edge to it that separated her from her friends. When that viewpoint will get taken away, nevertheless, the place does a songwriter go subsequent? For Samia throughout lockdown, the reply was clear: “I needed to write about previous experiences, as a result of nothing was actually taking place, from this contemporary perspective,” she says.
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In early 2020, Samia, like the remainder of us, discovered herself sequestered in solitude, unable to make poetry out of the current — which ended up being a blessing in disguise. “I’m an individual who’s actually afraid of being alone, so I needed to face plenty of issues,” she says. The Child was expansive in the way it grew to become a house for each listener. Its follow-up, nevertheless, can be Samia’s alternative to present herself the identical house. “I had extra room to be completely sincere as a result of I used to be sitting with myself extra usually and getting nearer to the underside of the the reason why I felt the way in which I did,” she provides. “That allowed me to be hyperspecific in a method that I used to be scared to do earlier than.”
Flash-forward two years, when Samia decamped to Betty’s, a North Carolina studio owned by Nick Sanborn and Amelia Meath of Sylvan Esso, together with her pal and collaborator Caleb Wright to make Honey — her burgeoning, mystical, and deeply forthright sophomore report. Honey is sparsely organized and paired with a robust story holding many throughlines; extra so right here than ever earlier than, Samia is cataloging her experiences for us to grasp, not undertake. The thesis of the songs being a fragmented relationship is a well-recognized circumstance, however Samia’s songwriting layers the report with vivid, particular imagery, like a Porches present at Child’s All Proper in Brooklyn, a lover’s mother threatening suicide, and doing anti-porn chants with evangelicals exterior an ex’s window.
As different indie artists elect to go larger and louder on their second albums, Samia approached Honey a lot in another way. It’s closely populated with delicate moments that give solution to well-timed dance numbers. On the apex of Honey, the solemn, empty-room piano ballad “Pink Balloon” organically transforms into “Mad At Me,” an evocative, sensory nightclub anthem. The luxurious retrospect of a withering romance on the previous collapses right into a paean about not being keep away from fallout. It could be simple to check Samia to different girls in indie. Honey prospers like a Phoebe Bridgers-Dua Lipa hybrid, however a observe like “Mad at Me” is an ideal illustration of the digital elasticity of Samia’s creativity.
How Samia was capable of make such acute, upbeat modifications of path — just like the title observe or “Amelia” — work with the aesthetic of the complete album is due partly to her partnership with Wright, whom she considers one in every of her closest buddies and the musician and producer she trusts greater than anybody else. “[Wright and I] each actually prioritize supporting the sentiment and supporting the track, and, coincidentally, it simply occurred to be that plenty of the songs wanted to be spare and minimal for us to have the ability to inform the story the way in which we needed to,” she says.
Wright and Samia collectively have grown since 2020. They, together with Nathan Stocker and Jake Luppen, labored collectively on The Child and have been attempting to be good about their method. Now it’s a 50-50 collaboration between them and their inventive inclinations. “When you have got a debut, it appears like plenty of strain to be the individual you wish to be,” Samia says. That every one modified in the course of the pandemic, when she opted to let go of interesting to the lots by being relentlessly intimate within the face of environmental and sociological finality. “For [Honey], particularly coming after COVID-19, [Wright and I] are extra considering being sincere,” Samia provides. “If we have been to die tomorrow, what would we wish to say, and the way would we wish to say it? And, on the threat of not being completely accessible to everybody, I believe it was necessary for us each to only say what we have been feeling and to seize the setting we have been in.”
[Photo by Sophia Matinazad]
After two years of reflection, Samia hasn’t hardened. Her preparations have softened, even when she pierces by way of the gloom with a track which may enrapture you in a nightclub. “There are these big moments of reduction or launch the place we get to bop it off,” Samia provides. “That’s what we have been aiming for, to essentially solely to and use these moments when it felt prefer it was completely time to step away from the darkness.” An explosive, cathartic track like “Honey,” which Samia wrote in quarter-hour, is what she considers to be the end result of the complete venture, therefore it being the title. “That track, simply personally, I’m certain, will learn in another way to individuals,” she provides. “However that track, to me, represents the entire story that I’m attempting to inform with this report.”
The surface-level story that Honey tells, lyrically, begins with “Kill Her Freak Out,” the place Samia reckons with the anger that stems from feeling unloved. She taunts her ex, proclaiming she’ll kill whoever he marries after which recollects recollections of worship songs, shedding her state ID and having goals of being pregnant. By the album’s finish, on “Dream Track,” Samia is in a unique place, singing of forgiveness. It’s not only a assortment of tracks about unhappiness and breakups. No, Honey goals to trace the non-public trauma of two lovers parting methods, informed from the viewpoint of any individual who has no alternative however to reduce each layer and piece collectively some form of understanding.
That songwriting significantly informs the musical story of Honey, which poignantly particulars the ecological basis {that a} relationship creates. Bonds break, individuals transfer and the world retains turning, however the roots retain energy. Samia understands that now and clings to the imagery of Pando, a grove of 80,000-year-old Aspen bushes in Utah which can be actually a single organism comprising 40,000 particular person bushes. The arboraceous metaphor captures Samia’s method to record-making altogether, as all 11 tracks on Honey are connective tissue forming into one entity of catharsis aglow with oncoming hope.
Perspective is all the pieces to Samia, which she generously emphasizes on “Sea Lions,” a piano ballad that swells into an digital breakdown merging an automatic voice together with her octave-surfing harmonies. Although it’s refined, Honey offers with how musical fame can have an effect on a relationship or catalyze its dissolution, and Samia involves the conclusion that it’s not reconciliation she seeks. She desires to cross paths with the individuals of her previous and proceed realizing them. It’s a theme straight addressed on “Sea Lions.” “You stated once I come on the radio it makes you wanna die/Effectively if I shut up, can I come inside?” Samia sings. “I don’t wanna discuss/I don’t ever wanna work it out/We’re too far gone/I simply wanna see your own home.”
Samia calls Honey a “group report” and likens her listeners, buddies and songs to an “ecosystem.” On the album, she culls a habitat-like sense of marvel for the individuals round her and the music she makes, one thing she purposely seemed for in the course of the pandemic. “Curating group is a giant ardour of mine,” she says. “That was a giant precedence with this report, simply attempting to decide on the individuals I used to be working with with intention and provides them the house to be absolutely collaborative.” You’ll be able to hear that affect on Honey, as collaborators like Christian Lee Huston, Rostam and Briston Maroney have their fingerprints in every single place. It modified the alchemy of the venture altogether, most significantly due to how malleable and impressionable Samia is as a musician — though she wasn’t at all times copacetic about listeners listening to the ticks and tips of different artists in her music. Past that, nevertheless, she has at all times labored in shut quarters with different artists, letting her personal abilities flourish by witnessing her friends play.
“To have [Huston and Rostam] work so intently on [Honey], you may actually hear them, and you may actually hear their affect on me, which I was cautious of or nervous about,” she provides. “Now I believe it’s simply the good factor. I hate doing something alone, particularly curating artwork. It’s at all times been pure to me to succeed in out for assist and collaboration, and I really feel so fortunate that these specific individuals have been keen to work on my stuff. I used to be actually not anticipating that.”
In recent times, few debut information as mystifying as The Child have been adopted up with a venture as deftly inspiring as Honey. Samia is now not attacking her personal work with lyricism that everybody can latch onto. As a substitute, she’s utilizing private progress to make amends with retrospect, tackling previous recollections in new methods. “I had 10 years to jot down the songs on [The Baby], and I had barely two to jot down [Honey],” she says. “Firstly of the method, I used to be like, ‘There’s no method I’m gonna do that. Not that a lot has occurred since I wrote [The Baby].’ However I landed on one thing that basically felt proper.” Samia attributes a lot of that call to Wright, who accompanied her throughout their handful of week-long studio periods. “There are only a few individuals on the planet who I really feel snug being completely sincere with, and he’s one in every of them,” she provides.
For the primary time, Samia needed to simplify all the pieces and simply let herself have emotions. That call is what makes Honey the brightest report of 2023 to this point, teeming with confessionals and transparency. “I’m writing songs to speak issues to folks that I’m too scared to say in dialog as a result of I hate confrontation,” she says. “I additionally am pathologically attempting to carry myself accountable on a regular basis. I’ve a very exhausting time simply feeling my emotions with out picturing them within the context of a court docket of regulation and seeing if my argument would maintain up, objectively.”
Half of Honey is zoomed out, as Samia makes an attempt to grasp how her emotions comprise the larger image. The opposite half is, as she places it, her “wallowing in it,” however with a aptitude of knowledge. “If I’ve discovered something up to now couple of years, it’s that it’s simply as necessary to get to the opposite facet as it’s attempting to be goal and attempting to be mature,” she says. A lot of the report offers with alcohol being consumed as a technique of escape. Few membership songs construct an sincere portrayal of how grief can present itself by way of dancing; the transitions into slowed-down components mimic the lull of isolation. In an period the place consuming to really feel much less is romanticized, Samia has devised a report that plainly illustrates how harmful the previous few years have been. What a present to observe her unfurl her personal previous with such attentiveness and veracity. Much more so, Honey units a benchmark for extra accountability in indie rock to return.
