Sam and the Sea’s latest EP, You Don’t Say is a subtly intense three-track offering driving the analog sensibilities of vintage folk-rock into an atmospheric, electronic haze. Recorded across upstate New York and Iceland, this LA-based duo taps into something deeply emotional and transportive.
Opening track “Power Lines” comes like a slow drive through the golden-hour smog of Los Angeles, following electric cables like constellations of human ambition. With rumbling drums and soft guitar grooves, the track gently lulls you into its groove before you even notice how subtly it’s tugging at something internal. The singer’s laidback, rich voice pulls no tricks as it simply lets the melody breathe. There’s an easy melancholy at the heart of the metaphor here: tracing power lines while staring out of car windows, chasing after something, perhaps a dream, that’s always just beyond reach.
Then comes the title track, “You Don’t Say,” which unfolds like a lucid dream. With sparse, glimmering guitar work and vocals that hover somewhere between trance and grief, it captures a mood that feels half-recalled and wholly felt. The unusual structure resists pop predictability, instead building a slow tension over three verses before collapsing into a ghostly, beautiful b-section that feels like a release of everything unsaid.
The final track, “TK09,” ventures deepest into the ethereal. A minimal ambient piano threads through glitchy, spectral vocals. A male voice, soft but resolute, sings “I am not strong enough…” and is shadowed gently by a female voice that lends his confession vulnerability and grace. It’s as if fragility is being doubled, not contradicted. This final track doesn’t end so much as dissolve.
You Don’t Say is a study in emotional restraint through delicacy and deliberation in intricate storytelling. Check it out on Spotify.
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Review by: Naomi Joan