〇Nashville-based Samia constantly veers between black comical confessions and excruciating gore on their sophomore album of raw and sad indie rock. Her opener, “Kill Her Freak Out,” is supported by her breath because of her funeral-like organ, imagining her killing her ex-lover. But after a while she called back her listeners. She sings and tightens her voice.
It’s a trick she’s been playing all along. Constantly zooming in and out through stories of broken relationships, toxic behaviors, and addictions in diary-like and uncomfortably relatable ways. A delicate pink balloon juxtaposes the emotional turmoil of a friend and the 26-year-old’s increasingly desperate attempt to lighten things up (“I’m trying to make you laugh / acrobatics I sweat like ”). “From the Bar to the ER”), before an increasingly painful chorus of “No, No, No” served as a much-needed universal purge.
Musically, much like her 2020 debut, The Baby, Honey distorts Samia’s multicolored voice into a lo-fi sound, blending Samia’s multifaceted voice with bruised synths (Nanana) and acoustic guitars (To Me It Was’s country-folk tunes). lightness) front and center. However, there is a flash of expanse. Rostam adds sparse drums, her machines and mutilated guitar shards to her curious Mad at Me, Sea Lions blossoms from a pathetic organ to a sad club throb, and distraught voicemails her message snatch pierces. Playful, painful, and full of surface-worming hooks, Honey feels ripe for a bleak, midwinter swell.