As mentioned in the recent Feet on the Ground post, No Kingdom is the eigth solo album of Vermont songwriter/string player Sam Moss. The majority of the songs were composed during a residency at The MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire (in the studio that Aaron Copland worked on Billy the Kid) and recorded at home in Brattleboro.
The reason I divulge these details is that they seem pertinent to the sound of the record. It’s the sort of album that seems to need state names and historical references in the review, it needs details of travelling and recording at home. In the age of the internet, where songs can be created entirely by a laptop, No Kingdom seems a relic to an older time, a reminder of what songs used to be about, stories that chronicle some pre-war region. There is a sense that we are listening in on some precious communication, messages from a time where words could not be broadcast across land and water instantaneously. As Moss sings in ‘Hammer’:
“Write me a letter
Leave it at the door
Tell me something
You never have before”
Maybe these messages never reach their intended target, the plea for the person to write goes unheard. These could be wishes and regrets locked in time as well as space, emotions that are decades old but alive in song.
I recently read an interesting article on Paste Magazine that questioned whether true folk music is possible anymore, arguing that folk music is music that is played for friends and neighbours, shared only within a community, and anything else is pop music with different instruments. Obviously, the internet age has made sharing your talent with a wider range of people both easier and essential for budding musicians, meaning that maybe the true definition of folk is now nearly defunct.
Whatever the true meaning of folk really is (or whether is even matters), you get the impression that Sam Moss is as close as a musician who shares their music online can possibly get to true fok music. It is a paradox that I say this sat at my computer a with the entire Atlantic ocean between us, but Moss’ songs do seem personal, addressed to members of community I do not know. I earlier used the term pre-war and I think it’s a suitable way to describe the feeling on this record. It brings to mind a time where people knew less of the world but more of each other, a time before the great connective ability of air travel and telephones and the internet worked their (paradoxically) isolating magic.
No Kingdom is to be released on the 15th October. You can pre-order the CD or MP3 album via his Bandcamp page.
As well as a burgeoning solo career, Moss makes up half of The Howling Kettles, an old time folk duo that released two albums in 2012. You can find further details of The Howling Kettles here, and you can explore the back catalogue of Moss’ solo work here.
And while we are on the subject of buying from bandcamp – read Jeremy from over at HI54LOFI explain why it is a vital (and underrated) tool in modern music.