Review: Samantha James's Subconscious

Over the holidays, Amazon had a thousand albums at reduced prices. Being the nut I am, I went through most of them to try to find some gems (I’ve had a hard time knowing where to turn on recent music, and this was as good a place to start as any). I wound up buying 5 of them, and even as the others are daring and wild and more academically what I like, I keep coming back to this album more than the others. (Hopefully I’ll review the others soon; for posterity, they were the self-titled albums from Eskmo and Animals as Leaders, 11:11 by Rodrigo y Gabriela, and the Budos Band’s third self-titled album.)

So why this one? Well, it’s one of the warmest, most inviting albums I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing. To those of you who know me, I don’t say that lightly, particularly because most albums with those terms turn me off for being far too simple. For example, I can’t stand Colbie Caillat at all, but “Dirty Epic” and “Luetin” by Underworld make me serenely happy. This is a bit inverted, I suppose, but the point stands: people who seem happy for no particular reason wind up irritating me. In other words, you can’t just play me a happy song and then say, “Hey Brandon, be happy now,” but you can lead me there with the right musical backing.

To me, this is the essence of Samantha’s best work; while the lyrics are basic, optimistic, sunny, and those other things that normally don’t resonate with me, they’re paired with music that makes me want to embrace the sentiment, i.e. music I would have liked anyway. At the end of the album, you want to know Samantha and draw energy from her outlook; you want to create and be happy with life and all those things she’s doing, as there’s clearly something about her approach that’s unique to her. There’s a reason she needs to be making this music and a reason I need to be listening to her, and that, more than anything, is the definition of artistic vitality.

So how does it stack up in my usual nine-part analysis?

1) Chord sequences. The album’s all about its jazz backdrop, which not only sets a mood but also gives depth to a usually shallow genre. In places, it’s actually pretty difficult to hum anything that isn’t the melody, which is an oddity for accessible music. The title track, for example, has a ton of ninths and sevenths floating in the mix – it’s something like Em9-F#m7-C#m9 in its main progression – so you sing along with the melody because it’s the only thing that would glue it together. So the chords add depth and bring focus to Samantha. I can’t think of a good comparison for this, which is of a course a compliment.

2) Song structure. Generally, it’s verse-chorus stuff here. Nothing groundbreaking, but “Life Is Waiting” is closer to an instrumental than it isn’t, with more of a verse-interlude structure, and it’s a nice change-up.

3) Mood. Oh, the wonderful, wonderful mood. My opening paragraphs basically are about the distinctions in mood that makes this a good album and others less so, but it’s clear from the album and the press that accompanies it that Samantha and her producer are about creating a mood. One of the biggest distinctions between this album and other “happy” electronic artists is that Samantha’s moods are more intuitive (Myers-Briggs N) than sensing (S).

Many dance songs reference beaches or clubs or other places when they want to talk about happiness. I can’t swim, I don’t dance well, and I’m introverted; these places are all places that don’t make me happy, therefore. The music that goes with these sentiments usually is brighter, cheerier, but ultimately simpler as well – throw your cares away and dance!, they tell us; and I can’t really do that.

Samantha’s looking for peace within herself, and so the music is more headphone-oriented and warm than what I’m railing against. She’s not celebrating summer so much as helping you make it through winter. Mind you, there are a few S moments through the record, but they don’t sound as authentic as someone who’s truly letting go in an S way – it’s still sentiments written and musicked (if you will) by a fundamentally introspective person.

4) Layers. Tons of them; I’m still picking them out after almost three weeks with this album. Top marks here.

5) Genre-bending. Not a focus here, but the songs sound of a piece while having more variety than they initially let on, and the organic instrumentation – acoustic guitars, electric pianos, and so on – allow this to be more firmly in singer/songwriter camp than most house-based music. The combination allows it to be neither Dido nor Tiesto, so that’s positive.

6) Innovation. For an album emphasizing warm subtleties, it is fitting that it takes a bit to notice that the lead track, “Waves of Change,” is house in 14/4, with a more difficult melody to fit into those chords than it seems on the surface. It would be foolish to expect some sort of experimental album in the works, but it is nice to know that Samantha knows how to get these oddities into the mix seamlessly.

7) Rhythm. It’s four-on-the-floor house music; what did you expect? That said, she’s clearly the type who would sound amazing working in a more explicit jazz context – something like “Soon” by Jazzanova would be a perfect vehicle for her. If she wanted to go this route, I know she could, so I hope that she does every now and again.

8) Production. This might go under Layers normally, but the production does a fantastic job in putting the synthesized/dance elements in an organic context. Often, you get dance productions that don’t have a good feel for acoustic instruments and produce them in a way that might as well have been programmed anyway. (As an acoustic guitarist first and an electronic producer much later in the game, I cringe when this happens.) Then there are acoustic-based songsters who, when they turn to sequencers, pick the most basic of sounds, get fascinated with the technology, and don’t complement their songs well at all.

The production sounds equally at home with both ends of the spectrum, and it’s always easier said than done when it comes to fusing all the elements. This helps a lot with the feel of the album; shorter songs like “Amber Sky” sound integral instead of between-singles filler, as the production folds it into the mood rather than leave it amateurishly jarring. This is one of the best-produced albums I’ve heard in awhile; it’s much appreciated.

9) Album flow. Given how many electronica albums don’t even feel like albums, the standards are different here than in, say, progressive rock, but the album has a definite, sensible flow even as it might have put a few too many slower songs at the end. There’s never an urge to skip a song or put it anywhere else, so that says they got the flow right.

Two other considerations are worth mentioning. First up: the lyrics. Poking around Facebook and Twitter, I suspect that Samantha is a much deeper person than her lyrics show. “Because I know this is where I belong” rhyming with “Take me where you think I belong” in “Subconscious,” while “Maybe Tomorrow” has “Knowing this is where you belong” as an end rhyme doesn’t speak highly of that depth, however. This is one of those concerns that’s pretty easily fixed if you look at lyric sheets as a whole, so it’s not a fatal flaw or anything, but that area could use a bit of work or maybe just more experience. Ordinarily I would just dismiss this as “who’s paying attention to the lyrics? It’s dance music!”, but it’s clear that she is paying attention and wanting to express something meaningful about herself, so as a fellow lyricist I want her to get to where she’s going.

Second: the vocals. This is how I know she cares about the lyrics; she’s so warm and inviting into those lyrics that she has to mean them and care about them – it’s impossible to sing that way otherwise. Samantha James singing is beautifully authentic and authentically beautiful. I think I could listen to her sing anything and be enraptured for hours; she could sing a spreadsheet or some fine print and my heart still would melt. The biggest touchstone for her music and stylings would be something like Soulstice (the San Francisco group circa 2002 who did “Lovely” and “Illusion,” not the rap group), but Samantha is so much more inviting (it’s a word I’ve been overusing, but it fits) than them or even Jan Johnston or Kirsty Hawkshaw, whose works I adore.

Again, it goes back to the intuitive side of Samantha. If you drew up a “lucky fan gets to spend a day with their hero” sort of contest for several electronic artists, I get the picture that with the divas it would be studio, then business concerns, then the club. With Samantha? You’d go to a cozy coffee shop, discuss the creative power of a morning, meet some deep thinkers, then write songs in the evening, maybe put on a CD or two, and in the end you’d feel like you had known each other for ages and that you had been blessed by getting to experience that day with her. It’s the same feeling you get off listening to the album; you feel blessed to be part of her world for an hour. And ultimately, that’s why I keep coming back to this work, and why you should come to it too. As she would put it, “Lift your head; embrace.”