Sam Moss – Shapes
Independent – Out Now
Shapes is Boston-based Sam Moss’s fourth LP, released into the uncertainty of the pandemic despite the original plan of hitting the road after its release. It’s striking how fitting the first verse of the opening track Shapes Out of the Dark is: “You were unprepared/ For the way the world came down on you/ With a dull heavy blow/ That youthful glow was knocked out of you”.
What sounds like a gentle, mellow record at first, unfolds into an emotional avalanche, cleverly packaged into rhymes that roll off the tongue, an elaborately fingerpicked guitar, and vulnerable voice. Stephen Ambra on cello, Michael Siegel on bass, and Benjamin Burns on drums help transport the listeners into the intimate world that Moss is weaving around us, taking nothing away from the painful simplicity of his songs.
Throughout the album, Sam Moss oscillates between metaphor and evocative, perceptive imagery. Opening lifts the listener out of New England forests and to an urban setting with the lyrics “Your laughter is like diamonds, preciously shining/ A sly mouthed mumbler, with New York City timing”. The scratchy percussion and the chopped-up rhythm come together in the line “How good to know you”, letting the song soar with light feathered melancholy.
Ballad in Fm flows like a river, always just on the verge of resolving: “When you broke your body/ How did you keep such a beautiful voice/ When you said goodbye/ Like honey and gravel, the road that you travelled”. In the end, repeating the verse, Moss omits the last line, finishing on a goodbye that doesn’t quite convey the satisfaction of an ending.
Morning Light is hopeful, with bright and warm guitar lines and a cello interwoven in the arrangement like a vine reaching around a tree. That hopefulness is counteracted by the fifth song, Proclamations, where the troubadour sings “Give every gift, give even blood/ And say, ‘hey hey honey, is this enough?’” with such resignation that it couldn’t have been more impactful had it been accompanied by a thundering orchestra. The next song, Fever Dream, picks up the pace, giving the listener an emotional break with its playful guitar hooks. Ways finds Sam Moss in the higher registers of his voice, where it’s the fragility in his vocal that deliver the subtle punches to the gut.
Sunday People emits a warm glow with descriptions of “warmth and crackling of the autumn”, with Talkers again taking the listener into more unsettling territory and lyrics about the state of the earth. The singer-songwriter closes out the album with Hymnal, a musing on loss that speaks to the seekers out there, waltzing us through our foggy morning coffees, singing: “I am crumbling at the towers as the universe around us dwindles/ Looking for a mantra or a hymnal”. As his voice fades away, I’m left aching for something I can’t quite describe, and I wonder if that wasn’t exactly what Sam Moss had wished to accomplish.
Order via Bandcamp: https://sammoss.bandcamp.com/
Photo Credit: Morgan Rose Ford