With the release of his new new full-length album Clear + Plain fast approaching, Vancouver Island-based singer-songwriter and guitarist Sam Weber has been releasing a number of singles to introduce audiences to his folk rock sound. Lead single ‘Oregon’ typified the “fusion of traditional and contemporary sensibilities which marks Weber’s sound,” as we wrote in a preview, “with strong percussion and bass anchoring layered vocals and his signature guitar work to offer an ode to its titular state,” not to mention an evocative vocals style which position him adjacent to acts like Jesse Marchant.
No less striking in its atmosphere, new single ‘Void’ offers a glimpse of a warmer, more relaxed dimension to Sam Weber’s work. But while the languid tone might suggest a track of romance and intimacy, the lyrics paint a more ambiguous picture, where mortality flashes into view with an unnerving abruptness. “[Void] was written around the time Mal and I went to Bosque Del Apache nature preserve outside of Socorro, NM so they could film and photograph the sandhill crane migration,” Weber explains. “The same Socorro that’s known for the Lonnie Zamora Incident, one of the best documented close encounters of the third kind.” As it turned out, experiences both terrestrial and extraterrestrial came to inform the track’s sound, its sense of mystery colliding with the all-too-real adrenaline rush of a near-death experience. As Weber continues:
Driving north on the 25 highway, we were looking at emergency vehicles headed south in the opposite lane. I turned back to our lane and there was a car inside of 100 feet driving toward us on the wrong side of the road. I grabbed the wheel from Mal who was driving and ripped it into the passing lane, and we teetered on two wheels and almost rolled the car and died. I think some of that near mortal energy combined with all the alien energy made its way out of me in ‘Void’.
Clear + Plain will be released on the 23rd August.
Photo by Jacob Boll