“The richness of Crain’s voice and the elegant simplicity of the musical arrangements bring drama to these stories” – The Observer

Full Time Hobby are pleased to announce the release of Samantha Crain’s new album “You Had Me At Goodbye” on 24th March 2017 on CD, ltd pink vinyl and digital download. Listen to the kinetic lead track “Oh Dear Louis” via The Line of Best Fit: https://www.thelineofbestfit.com/news/latest-news/...

Written over 4 months at the back end of winter whilst at home in Norman, Oklahoma, You Had Me At Goodbye was penned whilst Samantha was working shifts at a pizza place to save up money for touring, recording, paying bills, and as a self-confessed ‘film nerd,’ binge watching movies. “Oklahoma is beautiful but my relationship with it is complicated. There are mountains, plains, prairies, rolling hills, high deserts and plateaus, with an amazing creative community of people making beautiful visual art, interesting films and loud music. But it’s extremely Christian, conservative, and whilst people say it’s ‘friendly,’ really, people are only friendly if you’re white and aren’t dressed unconventionally. I feel welcome and alienated all at once.”

Where many songwriters will drown their sorrows at the bar, Samantha’s music provides instant relief. A playful and lively balance of sweet balladry and taught experimental art-punk spirit, You Had Me at Goodbye talks from the head and heart whilst punching from the gut. Ever the storyteller (her first EP was created from tales she had concocted in her journal), Samantha wrote ‘Betty’s Eulogy’ from the perspective of the wife of legendary Cherokee-Indian cowboy and vaudeville performer, Will Rogers whilst ‘Smile When You Call’ is an ode to the imagined lover in Jimmy Webb’s ‘Wichita Lineman’. “Usually I have a theme in mind when I start writing for an album but for this record, I just started writing. Turning 30, aging in general, has helped tremendously in freeing myself in the creative process,” she says.

Bolstered by the visionary production of John Vanderslice (Spoon, the Mountain Goats, Strand of Oaks), mixed and engineered by Jacob Winik (The Magnetic Fields, Hot Buttered Rum), Samantha returned to the Bay Area in California to, once again, record the album in analog at Tiny Telephone Studio. But her music finds equal influence through those kindred spirits who have shared her struggle to be heard – whether it’s good friend Dora, Patti Smith, Cyndi Lauper or many, many others as Samantha explains;

“This album is dedicated to and inspired by the independent, strong, focused women who somehow continue to explode through the dark clouds of the weirdly oppressive art/music world. Every woman with a vision who didn’t veer from it amongst dissension. Every woman who was vulgar and loud and smart and ugly, in addition to the other aspects of their person - everything in opposition of what was expected of them.”