Fans of Eleni Mandell, Tom Waits, Niko Case pay attention: Sam’s a girl. And she excels at the smokey noir cabaret acoustic bluesy/western sexy swing lounge feel that you know and love. Nothing trite, derivative. Great stuff, acoustic stripped down, 1920’s Django Rheinhardt jazz turns bluesy western turns Toms Waits low fi big percussion. Did I mention “sexy”? Wow, Sam Phillips tracks by and in a second my fickle heart is saying “Eleni Who?”… okay, not really but almost. Every song on this CD is a big winner. Don’t believe me yet? Well T. Bone Burnett and Marc Ribot think enough of her to contribute their talents to this (among other stellar players).

1) acoustic guitar w/ some brushed drums, smokey loungey western cabaret, sublime
2) dark noir w/ Tom Waits style percussion
3) wow, a nice slow hip swinger, dark mopey but sexy, with pretty string arrangement, okay, analogies to Eleni would be far too obvious here
4) upbeat, near perfect traditional near pop
5) is that a dobro? Blues swing, nice upbeat
6) western waltz, chill almost solo w/ acoustic guitar, but nice embellishments appear in string section
7) upbeat 2/4 near honkey tonk, pretty as a flower
8) sexy swing, say no more (except: check the violin leads!!)
9) dark, good swing to it
10) straight pop beat, big crash cymbal, this is damn close to indie pop
11) upbeat acoustic guitar singer/songwriter overall
12) minimal sing/song story telling, dark
13) 2/4 bouncy feel, fairly stripped though, pretty, with pleasant positive message, sorta