Sam Lowry is an artist that is perhaps best described as "dark americana". With four albums out on Higher Step Records, including the brand new "Songs of My Enemy" (featuring members of Murder by Death, Early Day Miners and Duraluxe); Lowry is coming off a year of divorce driven drinking and quality song writing and is hitting the road once again. This past year found him on tour with Murder by Death, Appleseed Cast, Unwed Sailor, Lucero, Rocky Votolato and William Elliott Whitmore. Lowry is currently taking the summer off to write a new album, finish his first book (written, not read) and generally relax and enjoy his hometown and homeboys, homegirls and homedogs.
Not only does Lowry talk about himself in the third person, but these people have talked about him in the third person as well.
CREATIVE LOAFING Dark, brooding, tasty
stuff.
CD BABY A creative, dark and deep venture
into the shared musical crevasse of artists like Nick Cave, Tom Waits and
Leonard Cohen. Sparse, empty and despondent, this album slowly oozes its
voice from its pores, dropping pools of dark, liquidy hopelessness into a
deep well of bottomless imagination. With incomplete thoughts and
scattered pieces of wisdom, Sam Lowry weaves a shadowy but stirring album
for those who are in no hurry to understand.
SPLENDID E-ZINE If every singer-songwriter had this much power behind such an
economy of words, we'd probably all have a higher consciousness by now.
Maybe that's what Sam Lowry's nudging us toward, one breathy, retributive
melody at a time.
THE PIN-UP Lowry
works his songs like small garden snakes, getting the lot primed and ready
to strike the hand of another who thinks he can easily charm them. All
notions of rustic, or alt.country or what-have-you seems kind of moot by
now, and even more when Lowry lowers voice to that parched sing-song
vocal.
CITYBEAT With a deflated, Leonard Cohen-like grumble
and an unexpected musical backdrop that blends together traditional
acoustic instruments like banjo, guitar and fiddle with warm yet tricky
drum loops and vintage-sounding keyboards, Lowry has concocted an honest,
dark and surprisingly melodic exercise in aural subtlety that works to
maximum effect. His textural, slanted and poetic take on Roots music gives
new meaning to the phrase "American Gothic."
