Sam Miller's circular "By The Time" from his 2019 full length beautifully sardonic "In One Place at a Time", seems to chase itself

AP Track Review

Sam Miller's out of breath By The Time, from his 2019 full length beautifully sardonic "In One Place at a Time", seems to chase itself. The piano lines and cadence with Miller's vocals give it an almost paranoid sense of time bending and the video filled and blended with Miller and what appears to be cold war exercises that ultimately burn like bloody hell feels odd, creepy and fractured. Miller has an odd sense about him and on songs like Marionette or the inside out, See It Through feel like drunken lounge piano songs in the Twilight Zone. Other songs like The Stage of Aging that plays like a 50's twisted Americana TV theme song or the bright 60's-ish chamber pop-esque Train Fire Delay both celebrate and lampoon both the tragedy and comedy of the desire to love and the eventuality of death by all means possible. Life is after all a cosmic comedy and Miller seems to know this all too well.

-
Robb Donker








THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:

Sam Miller is a man of unique talents. A rare musical soul who thrives in our modern day of synthesizers and microchips, but who would be equally content playing Bach fugues in a cathedral filled with orangutans. His musical output is driven by curiosity and exploration, noticeably lacking the self-aggrandizing spirit of so much pop music.

From the mysterious deserts of New Mexico, Miller is at once a songwriter, composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist. He is a master storyteller, who walks a tightrope pitched between the beauty of life’s complexities and the abyss of the subconscious. His lyrics grow more dynamic and intriguing with each listen. An elegant love song is simultaneously a riddle that would tickle the ghost of Lewis Carroll.