Sam Moss’ music is warm and comforting as an old friend. His recordings have a refreshing organic quality, with the instrumentation and arrangements rooted in folk and occasional rustic touches of Americana. In his latest, Swimming, Moss continues to work on that same fertile ground, with help from a band that put these powerful compositions in an exquisite sonic context.
Opening with the gentle, loping “Enough”, Moss’ guitar work and melodic voice mesh beautifully with the masterful work of Isa Burke, who plays a variety of instruments on the album but provides achingly beautiful violin here (as well as some gritty, Neil Young-like electric guitar leads), and Molly Sarle, whose harmonies lift the song into the stratosphere. “Broken by morning,” Moss sings. “And sunk by dusk / Each hour is dark / But I haven’t had enough.”
Sam Moss has a terrific way of placing his compositions within arrangements that are somewhat varied throughout Swimming yet still bring striking cohesion to the ten tracks assembled here. The title track bounces along on a low-key, full-band shuffle. “Lost”, which features electric guitar from Jake Xerxes Fussell, has the wide-open, cinematic vibe of Gregory Alan Isakov‘s best work. The fuzzy distortion that haunts “Eyes” gives off a warm, shoegaze sheen.
But Moss’ default genre appears to be folk. The acoustic guitar figure that runs through “Moonbeams” is rustic and sympathetic, with Joe Westerlund’s brushed drums providing the pulse as Moss sings of hope in difficult times. “Let the moonbeams brighten / Brighten up the natural earth / Let the days we question / Not let us lose our worth.” The lilting waltz tempo of “Wire” masks dark topics: “Sea level rise / It’s an ordinary morning / Fires on the horizon / What’s the use in the news if it’s no longer surprising?”
On the title track, Moss presents a bright arrangement to a song he explained in the press notes: “May take inspiration from my mediocre swimming abilities but is really more of an incomplete treatise on holding contradictions within the self.” The song ends with “Stuck in the past / But somehow still living / Out of my depth / But somehow still swimming.” One of Sam Moss’ true strengths, evident all over this terrific new LP, is his ability to write and record songs that initially seem harmless but will affect you profoundly, resulting in ten songs to be discovered, savored, and rediscovered.