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Anais Nin said, “Each contact with a human being is so rare, so precious, one should preserve it.” That suggestion is the muse impelling the conception of Samantha Crain’s second LP, You (Understood), set for release June 8 on Ramseur Records.
It’s a follow-up to her debut releases, The Confiscation EP (2008), a “musical novella” that had critics saying of the 21-year-old Crain’s literary writing style: “the Native American spirituality of N. Scott Momaday’s In The Bear’s House just as likely influences the songstress as the violence and destructive sexuality of the Depression-era characters in Erskine Caldwell’s Tobacco Road” (Paste Magazine), as well as the Songs In The Night LP (2009), of which Rolling Stone critic Will Hermes wrote: “Her voice is gorgeously odd — all fulsome, shape-shifting vowels that do indeed billow like fog. But while her moody country rock is full of dark themes, she rarely gives in to them.”
There is a story behind the making of You (Understood), which Crain describes as her “attempt to preserve her contact with some human beings, 16 to be exact.” These 16 people affected her through the writing and recording of these songs, and You (Understood) is her monument to those sporadic and revered chapters, now captured forever on this recording.
For a project that engages in so much dissection, Crain solicited Joey Lemon, producer of her Confiscation EP and guru of the Midwestern avant-garde band, Berry, to help her glue it all back together. They, along with Eric Nauni (Student Film) and Ben Wigler (Arizona, New Beard), recorded the 11 songs in seven days at Joey’s studio in a white pole barn on the north side of Wichita, KS.
Feeling the importance of giving each of these songs a sound as customized as the experiences and the people themselves, Crain reached out for different tools than on her last release, the country-tinged Songs In the Night LP. The guitars got fuzzier, the time signatures got modified, the drums got audacious, the spaces got bigger, the highs were higher, and the lows were lower. She got caught up in it, caught up in the decibels and the dynamics and the people.
Each song on this album rests on a juncture with a person, a real person, and it recounts a particular episode of life with that person. The scenes and the people are not especially unusual or stirring but the idea that the precise installment will never, in all of time, happen again was enough to interest Crain. She is taking a microscope to the simplest of human interactions and feelings, turning them over in her hands, looking at them from all angles, measuring them on all sides, and taking them apart, realizing they really are exceptional, but only in the smallest ways.
With You (Understood), Crain once again looks closely at life and people and is able to conjure a mood to bring the listener into her own magical world; where the ordinary is weird and stories unfold in a voice that - once heard, is unforgettable.
"I will give in to the dark clouds, and I will sing with the fog in my throat," Crain, a Choctaw Indian, declares, her voice a mix of vulnerability and resolve, to the cantering rhythms of "Rising Sun," the gorgeous folk-rock number that opens the album. The title track offers more of the same, except with more muscular guitars and a surging chorus."
-The Washington Post
“Her voice is gorgeously odd — all fulsome, shape-shifting vowels that do indeed billow like fog. But while her moody country rock is full of dark themes, she rarely gives in to them: Her band plays with jaunty sweetness, shuffling and bouncing through sorghum-sticky melodies.”
-Rolling Stone
“Ms. Crain — with turquoise tights screaming out from between a beige print dress and red cowboy boots — was captivating. Her pleading, slightly distant intonation recalled early-1990s Britpop, an accent atop a voice that traverses the space between Gillian Welch and Regina Spektor.”
– New York Times
"With her whisper-soft voice, Samantha Crain has definitely made herself stand out with her EP, The Confiscation. The young singer has a voice that sounds as though Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst were crossed with Cat Power. She's almost so quiet that the music seems to overpower her at moments, but she holds her place against the background of acoustic guitars and Dylan-esque harmonica riffs."
-Keke Mullins, Playback