Samia – Bovine Excision

SInger-Songwriter returns with a pretty, guitar driven, slightly haunting new single

9/10

Samia has long been one of my favourite artists. In fact, her 2020 debut album The Baby goes down as one of my favourite albums of all time. (Watch that space, by the way.) I find her voice to be particularly special in a busy sector of the music industry. Samia often constructs her songs differently to the conventional pop structure, this makes her music so exciting to listen to. You never know exactly where she’s going with it. You also know, it’s going to be lyrically excellent.

Bovine Excision is no exception on both fronts. Lyrically it centres around cattle slaughter which she says is a ‘metaphor for self-extraction.’ The lyrics are suitably abstract for a concept which I don’t quite understand, but am quite curious to learn more about on the rest of Bloodless, the album she announced alongside this single. Samia has never been one for lyrical small talk, everything means something.

The production is luscious and slightly loud, almost like a soft clipper has been placed on the master. (If you don’t know what a soft clipper is, don’t worry.) This gives Bovine Excision so much warmth, accenting the Americana style guitars and making those beautiful vocal stacks towards the second half of the record subtly overwhelming.

This is one of my most anticipated records of the year, and Bovine Excision is a wonderful starter for what’s to come from a quite brilliant artist.

Bovine Excision is out now. Samia’s third studio album Bloodless releases on April 25th on Grand Jury.