ALBUM REVIEW: On ‘Swimming’ Sam Moss Searches Out the Light

To listen to Swimming, the new album by Sam Moss, is to be confronted by beautiful contradictions. Moss and his ensemble spin a gossamer web of instrumentation around Moss’ earthy voice, at once hopeful and a deliverer of weary wisdom. With a band like Isa Burke on virtually every string instrument you can think of – Sinclair Palmer on double bass, Joe Westerlund on drums, Molly Sarlé on harmony, and Jake Xerxes Fussell contributing licks to “Lost” and “World” – it’s hard to imagine these compositions in more capable hands. It’s fitting, then, that Swimming explores the ways we hold ourselves back from life’s opportunities – occasionally punctuated by those moments when we get out of our own way.

“Enough,” which kicks off the album, is a series of achingly gorgeous lyrics that seek contentment while yearning for things beyond our reach. Even when we’ve exhausted what is enough, Moss muses when the “creek runs dry/and the soil is dust,” will we continue to grasp for more? And is that all-too-human desire, perhaps, a quality to admire? The stately progression of the music suggests that, yes – some things last beyond time, if we are patient enough to tend them.

Similarly, “Dance” employs a looping, haunting refrain that reminds us to hold on to our creative fires in the face of pain. It’s a post-apocalyptic soliloquy on what is needed to clear away the sorrows of the day. Especially in these recent days, Moss gives us a gentle but firm reminder that we need to tap into ourselves to make it through “the warmup, not the big one.” Whatever that looks like to you – and it doesn’t need to look like much – is the key for pushing through.

As the one-word song titles suggest, there’s an economy to the music in spite of the many textures Moss and the band evoke. Maybe that’s due to the way Swimming came to be: tracked live with little rehearsal, we can hear the ensemble simultaneously lean into each other. That may be why the album closer, “World,” speaks of the tragedy of mortality, even as the song itself is as comforting as a warm hand. This world may be indifferent at best and cruel at worst, but Swimming reaches us to hold on to those pockets of light.

Sam Moss’ Swimming is out February 7.