Shapes is the latest album by Boston guitarist and singer-songwriter Sam Moss, who we have praised previously for his “mostly gentle songs […] imbued with real feeling, rife with doubt and hope and longing, careful and composed and understatedly poetic.” The record sees Moss continue to create deft and assured folk songs, built upon the skeleton of his intricate fingerpicked guitar and fleshed out with the help of Stephen Ambra (cello), Michael Siegel (bass) and Benjamin Burns (percussion).
Described as a record about “fear, friendship, the fragility of earth, and different kinds of love,” Shapes addresses a nameless ‘you’, or a variety of second person characters. This carefully vague hand sees concise poetic musings blended with spare and evocative images both natural and human. Take ‘Morning Light’, a track which evokes whole seasons through the way the sun falls through a set of blinds, and with them captures the moods and emotions that emanate under such conditions. The songs of Sam Moss cast us as small elements within this wider picture, creatures with our own internal weather that is governed by the smallest of details and oldest of trends.
This timeless human spirit is what comes through strongest. Though delivered with an unassuming economy of language, it illuminates each track from within with a warm glow. A glimmer which comes in many shades and tones, from the heartfelt explorations of loss on ‘Ballad in Fm’ and ‘Hymnal’, to the almost giddy sense of fondness of ‘Opening’. With its gathering rhythm and earnest delivery, the latter highlights Moss’s uncanny ability to sound both poetic and conversational, like some old friend nonetheless granted the weight of a traditional folk song, painting universal sensations in the most intimate of colours.
Your laughter is like diamonds
Preciously shining
A sly mouthed mumbler
With New York City timing
How good to see the sparkling
And the ticking of your heart
How good to know you
Sam was kind enough to answer some of our questions so read on to learn more about the record, releasing an album during a global pandemic, and how the spectre of ecological collapse haunts even unrelated songs.
Your new album, Shapes, has been out a couple of weeks now. How has the experience been? Is it strange releasing a record without being able to tour with it?
It has been weird! I recorded Shapes more than a year ago. Covid hit before I could formulate a release plan, so I was just sitting on the songs for spring and summer. I could have spent the last six months planning an expertly crafted release campaign, but instead I kind of wallowed in indecision and then decided at the end of September to release the album in a few weeks.
It has been slower to spread than past albums, thanks in part to my last minute release plan, my fairly rough internet skills, and also the loss of touring. I would have normally booked a big tour to try to get word out, so I’m honestly a little lost on how to get people to hear it. Booking big DIY tours was the one part of the business side that I felt pretty good at, and it really is the best way to share music when you don’t have a support team (label, manager, pr, etc) behind you. Not touring is great in the sense that I have been able to move on to the next projects pretty quickly, but I really miss it. I hope I can find some more creative ways to share the record in the coming months, because I want people to hear it. I am proud of it.
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It has been over two years since the release of Neon, your last record. Pandemic aside, has your artistic practice changed in that time? What was your process for sitting down and writing these songs?
Since Neon I have become better at writing steadily, as opposed to sporadically. Some of the songs on Shapes came from times where I was writing either a song a week or a song a day. Having a structured requirement like that has been hugely helpful. It keeps me feeling like a songwriter, no matter what. While I don’t spend a lot of time playing music right now, I do write a song every week, so they’ve really accumulated during the pandemic, despite my being otherwise distracted by wanting to be in the woodshop, which is my favorite way to spend time these days.
You say the album is about “love of many kinds,” and I’m curious as to whether certain songs are about certain people (or animals/places/whatever) or whether those many loves are more entwined throughout? Are these autobiographical songs? Do you have faces in mind when you sing the word “you” on each track?
It’s a bit messy. Some of these songs are about me, some are about friends, strangers, or mashups of real and fictional people. More and more, I write as an onlooker rather than the central character, though there are some directly personal songs on here. There are several real life people who could be assigned to some of the ‘you’ characters, but I also bend reality a bit as I write. It’s important to me to be honest and earnest, but that doesn’t necessarily mean writing the exact autobiographical truth with each song. I like to explore the dimensions of my mind that I don’t give voice to in other parts of my life. Writing is a good way for me to take some small nagging doubt that I have and really dig into it.
You also mention that the record references the “fragility of the earth.” Could you elaborate on that a little? With everything else that’s been going on this year, it seems like our biggest problem of all hasn’t received much attention. Do you think of your songs as carrying an environmental message? Or is it something that seeps in naturally as part of you, its creator?
None of these songs could be considered ‘environmental songs’, but there are references throughout to “our biggest problem”, as you rightly call it. Issues that loom large in my head (and the world) occasionally find their way into a song about something completely different. I guess it’s a testament to the interconnectedness of everything. How can I truly write about one big thing without acknowledging the others? And also, how can I sometimes write about just one small thing on it’s own, isolated from everything else? Both have merit and value in art, I think.
Finally, what role do you believe art plays in these strange and uncertain times?
I have an ingrained need to make things every day. My parents are artists, so it’s always been a way of life. I value the act of quiet creation and process. Depending on the day it can feel like escapism or engagement.
In some ways, it’s a beautiful time for art, because for some of us who had set our lives up around it, there is a huge amount of time available to make things. Despite the impossibility of sharing work publicly in person, I am grateful for the time I have to create. I hope that when we can go to experience public art again, that we value it like we haven’t ever before.
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Shapes is available now from the Sam Moss Bandcamp page on LP, CD and digital download.
Photography by Morgan Rose Ford, album art drawing by Will Moss