"Here’s the key to my ribcage / Keep it safe while I’m away / I’ll try to keep my bed close to the phone / Just in case the line goes dead / Ignites those sirens inside our heads / On nights we might forget we’re not alone..."
There are some songs that sound like love. "Never Let Me Go" by Switzerland born, Brooklyn based Sam Himself is one of those songs. That is not to say that it is syrupy sweet, it is not. It has a sweeping glowing sound, complex with strains of indie pop, dance pop flavors, dream pop and underlying currents of post punk and gothic pop even. It is Sam's very first single of his sophomore album due to drop next year (2023). His well received 2021 debut album "Power Ballads" is a mesmerizing sonic dissertation on the power of broodings, atmospheres and universe building AND the importance of the storytellers voice. The track "Brando" is literally still with me like a hazy remembrance that will pop up at the strangest times, sometimes when I am in doubt and it's ending slaps me, still, across the face.
Home’s a strange and distant place
Where bones the wind can’t blow away
Pile up to a giant empty sky
Lone shadows in the shade we met
Won’t allow the sun to set
On the day we learned to say goodbye
AND
Paint my sleeves with your blade
My knees with your floor
When the weight pulls you deep
When the blood needs bleeding my love
I’ll play dead till you wake up
Hold my breath until I drop
I’ll go blind looking at you
Break a heart until it stops
** At this particular time we find ourselves in a financial pinch due to many factors. We want to keep AP going. It has been a passion project for over 13 years. PLEASE consider donating, we could really use the support. Thanks so much
We get by with a little help from our friends
Sam Himself, artist, singer songwriter, musician, indie rock avant pop, blended genres, "Never Let Me Go", Official Video, upcoming album, Swiss, Brooklyn based, bittersweet beautiful,
I mentioned before that "Never Let Me Go" with it's airy ascensions and pulsating beats sounds like love and it does but Sam's lyrics feel run dark. This is one of Sam's things, something he does often. Push sad, melancholy stories via poetic imagery despite what the music is cueing in your mind and sometimes you have to dig into the lyrics and read them to know them because of the way he paints them with filters, to adorn them with emotional edges that might feel like ghosts from the past or feeling spoken only on the phone or maybe even like radio transmissions from space.
Take the beautifully moving passages:
Home’s a strange and distant place
Where bones the wind can’t blow away
Pile up to a giant empty sky
Lone shadows in the shade we met
Won’t allow the sun to set
On the day we learned to say goodbye
AND
Paint my sleeves with your blade
My knees with your floor
When the weight pulls you deep
When the blood needs bleeding my love
I’ll play dead till you wake up
Hold my breath until I drop
I’ll go blind looking at you
Break a heart until it stops
Sam says what we have all felt when relationships wither, when confronting something or someone (for whatever reason) doesn't happen. When fruit on the counter just spoil as nature itself causes it to do.
The Official Video "Never Let Me Go" is blissfully cool. Enjoy it, let it saturate you, then check out Sam's first album and sit quietly (figuratively) waiting for the next.
-Robb Donker Curtius
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:
https://www.facebook.com/samhimselfmusic/
https://www.youtube.com/samhimself
https://www.instagram.com/sam.himself/
http://www.samhimself.com/
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:
https://www.facebook.com/samhimselfmusic/
https://www.youtube.com/samhimself
https://www.instagram.com/sam.himself/
http://www.samhimself.com/
https://samhimself.bandcamp.com/
Sam Himself, Switzerland’s ‘King of Tears’ and New York’s leading Fondue Western™ baritone, returns with ‘Never Let Me Go’, the first single of the indie rocker’s upcoming second album (due out in 2023). The lovelorn stomper is a full-body split between brazen intimacy and anthemic pop, and it marks the Big Bang of a new era for Sam Himself, the solo project of Swiss-born, Brooklyn-based artist Sam Koechlin. ‘Never Let Me Go’ is the soundtrack of risking another shot at hope – and dancing your heart out in the process.
It’s been less than a year since his debut LP Power Ballads (“well-crafted set of atmospheric post-punk” - KEXP) broke Sam Himself onto the international stage. He could be forgiven for taking a quick siesta on his laurels, which include his first national chart entry, radio airplay across Europe and in the U.S. (as recently as May 2022, KCRW declared one of Sam’s songs Today’s Top Tune) and two Swiss Music Award-nominations.
Wasting time, however, isn’t a skill you’ll find in the repertoire of the songwriter, performer and multi-instrumentalist. Sam’s prolific output speaks for itself: prior to Power Ballads, he was making a name with those “smokey baritone vocals” (Under The Radar) in his Slow Drugs EP (2020), which Sam released shortly after the outbreak of COVID-19. Sam was touring in Europe when the pandemic pulled the plug on live music and Sam’s return to New York City, his chosen home of the previous decade. The shock, grief and solitude of that experience went on to shape Sam’s first album.
‘Never Let Me Go’, by contrast, was inspired by new beginnings.
“The last couple of years took their toll on me like they did on all of us, but they also gave me a lot to be thankful for. It still feels like a small miracle that anyone cared about my music while we were all going through this pretty bleak time,” Sam says with a touch of Swiss understatement.
When his music started to make waves, Sam was stranded in Switzerland for the first time since his teens. Still, he didn’t hesitate to meet the moment, and so began a period of professional recognition and personal upheaval or, in Sam’s own words: “I didn’t sleep for a year.” Then came the biggest plot twist of the whole dizzying series - he fell in love.
“You couldn’t make this sh*t up,” he chuckles. Sam describes the experience as seeing “actual light” again at the end of the tunnel for the first time since the outbreak of the pandemic. “When it first became clear that I wouldn’t be able to return to New York for the time being, my whole world felt like it was going to end. It didn’t, fortunately; it just started over! And it’s been getting bigger ever since.” The flying sparks ignited Sam’s creative engine, too, and before long, he had an LP’s worth of new songs on his hands, each in its own way inspired by the fragile promise of having something to lose again – or someone.
To record his new material, Sam Himself rejoined forces with his longtime creative partner, New York City-based producer and engineer Daniel Schlett (Iggy Pop, The War on Drugs) aka the ‘Second Beatle’. The pair managed to record most of Power Ballads remotely, exchanging home recordings while Sam was stuck in exile.
Fast forward to early 2022 and Sam Himself is back at Strange Weather, Schlett’s Brooklyn studio and the artist’s creative homebase. Now, the two are joined by Sam’s close friend and live band member bassist Josh Werner (CoCo Rosie, Ghostface Killah) and, for the first time, dummer Chris Egan (Blood Orange, Solange) in a full-throttle celebration of what’s possible when, at long last, musicians get to play music together again in one room. Producer Schlett’s category-defying mixes were mastered by Greg Calbi (David Bowie, Bruce Springsteen), the legendary engineer who Sam has been lucky enough to work with for a number of years.
The music video for ‘Never Let Me Go’ dials up the beautifully weird aesthetic that has become a hallmark of Sam Himself’s’s visuals. True to the song’s incorrigibly romantic spirit, the artist joined his go-to videographer, Stefan Tschumi, in Iceland on a whim during a short break between tour dates. Over the course of two frantic days and nights, drunk on the ethereal beauty of the country and fueled by the promise of finally being able to travel again, they captured Sam throwing his limbs across the otherworldly Icelandic landscape in bursts of raw, uncompromising exultation.
Looking ahead, Sam is set to play a series of showcases through 2022 – including his second collaboration with the Basel Symphony Orchestra in October – before embarking on a major tour of Germany, Switzerland, Austria and elsewhere in Europe (TBA) in support of his upcoming second album. Additionally, a number of North American dates for early 2023 are in planning
Sam Himself has been featured by KCRW, KEXP, SPIN Magazine, Consequence of Sound, Under The Radar, American Songwriter, The Philadelphia Globe, FLUX.FM (GE), radioeins (GE), DIFFUS Magazin (GE), FIP Radio (FR), Les oreilles curieuses (FR), Swiss National Radiotelevision SRF (CH), Danger Mouse Jukebox, 20 Minuten, BZ - Basellandschaftliche Zeitung, and many more.
Sam Himself, Switzerland’s ‘King of Tears’ and New York’s leading Fondue Western™ baritone, returns with ‘Never Let Me Go’, the first single of the indie rocker’s upcoming second album (due out in 2023). The lovelorn stomper is a full-body split between brazen intimacy and anthemic pop, and it marks the Big Bang of a new era for Sam Himself, the solo project of Swiss-born, Brooklyn-based artist Sam Koechlin. ‘Never Let Me Go’ is the soundtrack of risking another shot at hope – and dancing your heart out in the process.
It’s been less than a year since his debut LP Power Ballads (“well-crafted set of atmospheric post-punk” - KEXP) broke Sam Himself onto the international stage. He could be forgiven for taking a quick siesta on his laurels, which include his first national chart entry, radio airplay across Europe and in the U.S. (as recently as May 2022, KCRW declared one of Sam’s songs Today’s Top Tune) and two Swiss Music Award-nominations.
Wasting time, however, isn’t a skill you’ll find in the repertoire of the songwriter, performer and multi-instrumentalist. Sam’s prolific output speaks for itself: prior to Power Ballads, he was making a name with those “smokey baritone vocals” (Under The Radar) in his Slow Drugs EP (2020), which Sam released shortly after the outbreak of COVID-19. Sam was touring in Europe when the pandemic pulled the plug on live music and Sam’s return to New York City, his chosen home of the previous decade. The shock, grief and solitude of that experience went on to shape Sam’s first album.
‘Never Let Me Go’, by contrast, was inspired by new beginnings.
“The last couple of years took their toll on me like they did on all of us, but they also gave me a lot to be thankful for. It still feels like a small miracle that anyone cared about my music while we were all going through this pretty bleak time,” Sam says with a touch of Swiss understatement.
When his music started to make waves, Sam was stranded in Switzerland for the first time since his teens. Still, he didn’t hesitate to meet the moment, and so began a period of professional recognition and personal upheaval or, in Sam’s own words: “I didn’t sleep for a year.” Then came the biggest plot twist of the whole dizzying series - he fell in love.
“You couldn’t make this sh*t up,” he chuckles. Sam describes the experience as seeing “actual light” again at the end of the tunnel for the first time since the outbreak of the pandemic. “When it first became clear that I wouldn’t be able to return to New York for the time being, my whole world felt like it was going to end. It didn’t, fortunately; it just started over! And it’s been getting bigger ever since.” The flying sparks ignited Sam’s creative engine, too, and before long, he had an LP’s worth of new songs on his hands, each in its own way inspired by the fragile promise of having something to lose again – or someone.
To record his new material, Sam Himself rejoined forces with his longtime creative partner, New York City-based producer and engineer Daniel Schlett (Iggy Pop, The War on Drugs) aka the ‘Second Beatle’. The pair managed to record most of Power Ballads remotely, exchanging home recordings while Sam was stuck in exile.
Fast forward to early 2022 and Sam Himself is back at Strange Weather, Schlett’s Brooklyn studio and the artist’s creative homebase. Now, the two are joined by Sam’s close friend and live band member bassist Josh Werner (CoCo Rosie, Ghostface Killah) and, for the first time, dummer Chris Egan (Blood Orange, Solange) in a full-throttle celebration of what’s possible when, at long last, musicians get to play music together again in one room. Producer Schlett’s category-defying mixes were mastered by Greg Calbi (David Bowie, Bruce Springsteen), the legendary engineer who Sam has been lucky enough to work with for a number of years.
The music video for ‘Never Let Me Go’ dials up the beautifully weird aesthetic that has become a hallmark of Sam Himself’s’s visuals. True to the song’s incorrigibly romantic spirit, the artist joined his go-to videographer, Stefan Tschumi, in Iceland on a whim during a short break between tour dates. Over the course of two frantic days and nights, drunk on the ethereal beauty of the country and fueled by the promise of finally being able to travel again, they captured Sam throwing his limbs across the otherworldly Icelandic landscape in bursts of raw, uncompromising exultation.
Looking ahead, Sam is set to play a series of showcases through 2022 – including his second collaboration with the Basel Symphony Orchestra in October – before embarking on a major tour of Germany, Switzerland, Austria and elsewhere in Europe (TBA) in support of his upcoming second album. Additionally, a number of North American dates for early 2023 are in planning
Sam Himself has been featured by KCRW, KEXP, SPIN Magazine, Consequence of Sound, Under The Radar, American Songwriter, The Philadelphia Globe, FLUX.FM (GE), radioeins (GE), DIFFUS Magazin (GE), FIP Radio (FR), Les oreilles curieuses (FR), Swiss National Radiotelevision SRF (CH), Danger Mouse Jukebox, 20 Minuten, BZ - Basellandschaftliche Zeitung, and many more.
** At this particular time we find ourselves in a financial pinch due to many factors. We want to keep AP going. It has been a passion project for over 13 years. PLEASE consider donating, we could really use the support. Thanks so much
We get by with a little help from our friends
Sam Himself, artist, singer songwriter, musician, indie rock avant pop, blended genres, "Never Let Me Go", Official Video, upcoming album, Swiss, Brooklyn based, bittersweet beautiful,
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