American singer-songwriter Johanna Samuels made her debut in 2021 with the pleasant and quirky sounding “Excelsior!” and takes some extra steps on her even better second album “Bystander”
Johanna Samuels is not yet very well known, but she has been working in a small circle for a while. Her beautiful debut album “Excelsior!” deserved a bit more attention in 2021 and the “Bystander” released this week the album deserves that, because “Bystander”, made together with Bonny Light Horseman Josh Kaufman, this is not only an excellent album, but also an album that sounds different from most of the other albums in the genre.
During her darkest moments, while writing in isolation, her old friends in the band Bonny Light Horseman offered to take her out on tour in early 2020. “They re-contextualized music for me all over again,” she says. Observing a truly kind and compassionate music community brought Samuels out of herself even more. Inspired by conversations with producer Josh Kaufman (The Hold Steady, Bob Weir, Cassandra Jenkins) on the road, Samuels took him up on his offer to produce her new songs and retreated to Isokon Studios in Woodstock, NY in the summer of 2021.
Johanna Samuels writes songs full of melancholy, but they often sound surprisingly sunny. They are songs that draw on the past and the present and that are not averse to influences outside of American roots music.
She really is a great talent Johanna Samuels. released June 23rd, 2023
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