At the top of the new year, Oklahoma singer-songwriter Samantha Crain will be releasing her seventh album, Gumshoe. The album, which reflects her personal experiences and artistic growth over the past three years, is a culmination of creativity inspired by unexpected life changes, including a newfound love.
Gumshoe has had a special place in Crain’s heart since her teenage years. It’s a word she has written on the first page of each and every one of her writing notebooks. We can expect the album to continue Crain’s transcendent balance of confounding beauty. It’ll showcase her life-affirming anthems, go-to style she’s honed over the course of her two-decade career.
For the last three years, Crain has been purposely digging deeper into vulnerability while writing new songs. Additionally, she has explored the concept of reciprocity within her own connectedness. This inward-bending process has caused her to realize some deep truths about change and the ever-evolving world of human relationships.
“But as I explored vulnerability and reciprocity in my relationships, I realised… we can change by the minute, and that’s okay,” said Crain.
Crain readily admits her relationship with place hasn’t always been so cut and dry. Her challenges forced her to reflect, question, and deeply engage. Through artistic expression, she engaged her sense of self as a person and citizen of her community.
“I spent much of my life as a lone wolf,” she stated. “That’s the biggest lesson of the past few years: I can be a lone wolf sometimes and still belong to a community.”
The creative process for Gumshoe provided Crain with enough freedom to wrestle with these ideas on a personal level. She painstakingly fought for an honest depiction of her life’s experiences. She illustrates from her cultural background. In her ancestors’ Choctaw language, there are no words for “is” or “are,” a reflection of their understanding that nothing is permanent in life.
This artistic vision for Gumshoe was further shaped by iconic celluloid. Having just seen The Maltese Falcon, she envisioned the story of two seemingly mismatched people who find love despite themselves. This narrative struck a personal chord with her as well.
“After watching The Maltese Falcon, I considered how detached detective characters are and imagined two loners finding love,” she explained.
Her forthcoming album, due out early next year, intends to reflect this fine line of narrative, solitude and togetherness, shaped by the raw, honest threads of Crain’s unique musical perspective.
Indeed, Crain’s music has always been marked by its vivid storytelling lyricism and poignant emotional undercurrent. Through Gumshoe, she hopes to convey her own story. Meanwhile, she hopes to take us deeper into universal truths about human relationships and self-discovery.
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