Alison Stewart: This is All of It on WNYC, I'm Alison Stewart. One-time New Yorker singer and songwriter, Samia, joined us back in 2020 after the release of her debut album, the critically acclaimed The Baby. Her voice was described as expressive and soulful. Five years later, she's now based in Minneapolis and about to release her third LP, Bloodless, but today she's here with me in WNYC Studio 5, along with her band, for a preview of the album. Tomorrow, she'll be at Rough Trade. Samia, would you kick us off with a song?

Samia: Sure. Hey.

Alison Stewart: What are we going to hear?

Samia: This is called Bovine Excision.

Alison Stewart: All right, let's hear it. [music -- Samia -- Bovine Excision]

Samia: Diet Dr. Pepper.

Raymond Carver.

Sitting in the bathtub while they're knocking.

I wanna be untouchable. I wanna be untouchable.

You took the door off its hinges.

Doll eyes red in the litmus.

I felt the pea, can I eat it?

I felt the pea, can I eat it?

Picking leeches off white underwear

Neck, back, inscrutable stare

I wanna be impossible

I wanna be impossible

Fred flirts with the bartender

"We met last year here, remember?"

She says, "I'm old, but I'm not dead"

She says, "I'm old, but I'm not dead"

Rice wine, lime-flavored Lays

Passing go to sit in driveways

Clad in leopard, clutch the banister

Twirling like a Degas dancer

I just wanted to be your friend

Cup of tea in your cold hand

And drained, drained bloodless

And drained, drained bloodless

And drained, drained bloodless

And drained, drained bloodless

Alison Stewart: My guest is Samia. We haven't spoken to you in five years.

Samia: Wow.

Alison Stewart: How are you, first of all?

Samia: Doing well. How are you?

Alison Stewart: I'm doing okay. When you think about your music and what's changed the most about your music and your practice in those five years, what's changed the most?

Samia: That's a really good question. Oh, wow. That's a really good question.

Alison Stewart: A chair, instead of a chair.

Samia: Yes. I think I've had a lot of time to experiment with different styles and different approaches. Honestly, I've circled back to the thing I started with, but it was really reassuring to try a lot of different other stuff to remember why I started doing this in the first place, which is a real love of poetry and words.

Alison Stewart: You've moved a lot. You've gone from New York to LA and then to Nashville and then to Minneapolis.

Samia: Then Nashville, then LA, and then Minneapolis, yes.

Alison Stewart: What did all those places do for your music? Was it different in each place? Did each place add something?

Samia: Yes, I'm a real sponge. I love being in a part of an inspiring community. The places that I felt the most alive are the places where I really respect and love the art that I'm in proximity to, so Minneapolis has been really fun for that reason.

Alison Stewart: That song we just heard, Bovine Extraction, it's where the title comes from, the chorus. It's the first song on the album. It's literally about a cow mutilation.

Samia: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Right. Okay. Good song.

Samia: Thank you.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: First of all, why did you want that to be the first song that people hear on the album?

Samia: It introduces that line, Bloodless, which is obviously the title of the album, and so much of this album is about the power of what's not there and how big absence can be. With this particular example, it's always been interesting to me that with bovine excision, there's no blood at the scene. The cows are completely drained of blood, and so it makes you really think about the blood. 'Where's the blood? Why isn't it there?' It felt like an apt metaphor.

Alison Stewart: How did you first hear about bovine extraction?

Samia: I was on a date.

Alison Stewart: I was on a date.

Samia: I was on a date.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] It was on a date?

Samia: I was on a date. Didn't work out, but he gave me that real beautiful nugget of information, and I am so grateful.

Alison Stewart: Oh, my gosh. It really happened to you on a date?

Samia: Yes, he told me all about it. I really was fascinated. I mean, I was a good audience for that particular story.

Alison Stewrat: Wow.

Samia: It's fascinating. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: I'm going to have to think about that for a while. The album is called Bloodless. When did you know blood was going to become a motif for the album because it appears in a couple different songs?

Samia: Yes, I didn't know until after. It just happened. I started writing about almost every song I say blood. I didn't do that on purpose, but so then, by the end of the writing process, I was like, "This absolutely has to, the title has to include blood in some way."

Alison Stewart: What were the early ideas for the album?

Samia: First, I was studying historical muses. It didn't really end up being about that at all, but it just snowballed into what it means to be a muse and how a lot of the time, a muse is someone who's like, mostly unknown, with a lot of gaps to be filled. That led to this absence thing about how if you leave a lot of gaps to be filled or space to be projected onto, you can actually be a lot bigger than you are as maybe a human being.

Alison Stewart: Was that something that you felt early on in your career?

Samia: Not necessarily in my career, just in my interpersonal relationships.

Alison Stewart: Could you tell me a little bit more about that?

Samia: Yes, I just have found that the less you give of yourself, the more you can be to someone and you're not really tied to one identity or responsible for one identity. Sometimes that can make you more appealing, maybe to other people. so it's something I found myself doing even though, like the ultimate goal was connection. That is definitely a roadblock to connection, but I just wanted to look at that in my relationships, why I would keep myself so far from people.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Samia. Her new album is Bloodless. It comes out next Friday. She's here with a live preview and she'll be at Rough Trade tomorrow. Reading through the Rolling Stone piece, this stuck out to me. You said, "I had so much shame about being worried about men and maybe having altered myself in some way because of it." What ideas did you go into this album with about femininity and masculinity?

Samia: I realized I had built a personality around criteria that I imagined men would want. It didn't even come from any particular man in my real life. It just was something that I hypothesize. Then I built this whole personality around it, and when I realized that, I was like, "Oh, I've got to do a lot of working backwards to get to some self that might exist in a vacuum." Ultimately, what I found for myself was that there wasn't a self that existed in a vacuum. It was just like this conglomerate of everything I've ever tried to be, everything anyone's ever told me, so then it was just about accepting that.

Alison Stewart: One of your earliest tracks says-- this lyric's great- "Someone tell the boys they're not important anymore." Sorry, boys.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Seven years later, what do you think has changed about your experience, your relationship to men, to boys?

Samia: That song I wrote when I was 17, so it's obviously, [laughs] a little more a less thought out concept. Maybe I was just angry, but now I realize a lot of it was stuff that I made up that wasn't really actually coming from any particular person or their real expectations of me. That maybe nobody even really had any expectations and I was projecting a lot of it.

Alison Stewart: Why do you think you're projecting? That's interesting.

Samia: You want to be what people want.

Alison Stewart: Yes.

Samia: Until you realize you can't. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: It's true. I mean, that happens when you're young.

Samia: Totally.

Alison Stewart: You look back and sometimes you're like, "Really? I thought that?"

Samia: Yes, it turns out sometimes they didn't even want anything. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: Good point. The next song we're going to hear is Lizard. Tell us a little bit about when you wrote this song.

Samia: We're going to actually do this song called Hole in a Frame. That's okay.

Alison Stewart: Okay. You're going to do a song called Hole in the Frame.

Samia: [laughs]

Alison Stewart: Tell me about that.

Samia: This song is about a hole that Sid Vicious punched into a wall at Cain's Ballroom in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and how the value of something that isn't there again. Like the absence of him in that literal void that he left makes you wonder about him and why he punched it, and it becomes this enormous thing.

Alison Stewart: All right, let's hear Hole in the Frame, this is Samia.

[MUSIC -- Samia -- Hole in the Frame]

Samia: Nothing goes how it was gonna

You miss the boat, you gotta swim

But I don’t have to tell you that

Tulsa, Oklahoma, hole in a frame

Sid was vicious

And the drywall cracked

Like an autograph

That endlessly appreciates

A little death goes a long, long way

There I am where I should not be

Obviously, I bought the ticket and took the ride

In the wind and

Trying to circumvent your line of vision from stage right

Like a photograph

Of the last time I came

A little death goes a long way

It's raining, I'm straying from the border

You know what they say about the baby and the coroner

Maybe I was born for this

Dying to myself

While you hold the onus

Will you hold the onus?

Will you hold the onus?

A little death goes a long

A little death goes a long

A little death goes a long

A little death goes a long way

Alison Stewart: I'm in the studio with singer-songwriter Samia. Her third album, Bloodless, comes out next Friday, and she's here with a live preview. She'll be performing at Rough Trade tomorrow evening. Would you mind introducing us to your band?

Samia: Yes. This is Sam Rosenstone on piano.

Alison Stewart: Hey Sam.

Samia: Daryl Ron on acoustic guitar, Boone "the Riverman" Wallace on guitar.

Alison Stewart: Okay, there's a story there. We'll go back to that.

Samia: [chuckles] Ned French on the bass.

Alison Stewart: And?

Samia: And? [chuckles] No, I refuse to introduce my drummer.

[laughter]

Samia: Sorry, I couldn't see him because he was in a box. This is Noah Route Quirk Wormy on the drums.

Alison Stewart: We understand you've known Noah for a really long time.

Samia: So long. So long that it's crazy that I almost didn't say his name.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Did you first meet Noah?

Samia: I met Noah at a rock show. I met Noah through Ned at a show, and he had frosted tips.

Ned: [laughs]

Alison Stewart: Oh, do tell. He's got a Good Jersey shirt on, by the way.

Samia: Yes, he's from Jersey.

Alison Stewart: Really? What part?

Samia: God, I wish I knew. Do you have a microphone?

Noah: I can talk into the room.

Alison Stewart: Sure, what part of New Jersey?

Noah: Central Jersey near Asbury Park.

Alison Stewart: Nice.

Noah: Alpha phone bill.

Alison Stewart: Cool. We have listeners. Touring with this band and playing with this band, tell me a little bit about what it means to you to be with people that you trust, people that you can laugh with, you can make jokes about their hometown.

Samia: It means everything. [chuckles] I can only be extremely sincere about it, but it means everything. It's like the most valuable thing. Being on the road and doing this pretty vulnerable thing, getting up and singing my feelings at strangers can be overwhelming. If you don't have a really honest support system, it is not great. I'm so lucky to do this with people I know and trust, and they're just also really funny and cool.

Alison Stewart: You worked with producers on your album you've worked with before?

Samia: Yes, yes. I've basically done all three albums with mostly the same people.

Alison Stewart: It's Jake Lupin and Caleb Wright, yes?

Samia: Yes.

Alison Stewart: All right. Why do you return to them as collaborators? Why do you keep working with them?

Samia: I'm shy, and it takes a lot for me to crack myself open the way that I want to be able to for songwriting in front of people that I don't really trust and know and respect. Yes, it just I trust their taste. I know they know me, I know them. It feels like they're so much a part of my artistic identity now that it feels like we're doing this together.

Alison Stewart: What do those producers bring out in you that you maybe didn't even know that you had yourself, that you didn't know you had?

Samia: That's such a good question. It's like a mirror. I think I sometimes want to be a version of myself that maybe is per my interests or tastes at any given moment, I want to be an amplified version of myself in that direction. They're able to be like, "Well, that's not. Let's remember the core of you. "Also, sometimes I get a little Rumpelstiltskinny in my lyric writing, where I sound like a bridge troll, like riddles.

Alison Stewart: [laughs]

Samia: They'll be like, "Maybe rein it in and use some English words that people understand," so that's nice.

Alison Stewart: Can you think of a time in making this record that-- they didn't make a decision- they helped you make a decision that really worked out?

Samia: Oh, yes, totally.

Alison Stewart: Can you think of one?

Samia: Man, like, there's a song called Sacred on this record, and I was going to have it be this really brooding ballad with no hook and just infinite verses about me being so upset with someone. They were like, "This is a pop song, and you don't have to be scared of a pop song with a hook. Just take advantage of this opportunity and sing the pop song." I'm glad we did because it's fun.

Alison Stewart: It did help you come out of your own voice? Have your voice come out of you better is what you're saying?

Samia: Yes. It added an aspect of levity to the song that ended up being really important, I think, on the record.

Alison Stewart: In between the songs are these radio dial effects.

Samia: Yes.

Alison Stewart: All right. Where did those elements come from? Why did you want to put those in?

Samia: Originally, when we were talking about the sonic palette for this album, we were thinking about a cabin on a swamp where you could faintly hear a broken radio playing from inside it. We wanted the album to somehow embody that, and so that's what we landed on, those little radio snippets that might be totally indulgent, but I think it helps set the scene.

Alison Stewart: The album comes out April 25th. What's an element of production on the album that you really love that you would want people maybe to listen for, kind of Easter eggs, we call them?

Samia: Oh, man, there's so many. The clarinet on pants is my favorite pieces.

Alison Stewart: Clarinet on pants. All right, tell me more about the clarinet on pants.

Samia: It wasn't there until days before we submitted the record, and my friend Caleb, who produced it, just snuck it in. I didn't even know he could play the clarinet until I heard it.

Alison Stewart: [laughs]

Samia: He did a beautiful job.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Samia. We are talking about her third album, Bloodless. It comes out next Friday. She's joining us with a live preview. Bloodless, your third album, you wrote. Your second album, Honey, came out in '23. Does that sound right?

Samia: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Okay. In I.D. magazine, you said, "Everyone warned me about second albums, and I obviously didn't want to believe it, but it was tough." What was tough about it?

Samia: I think, famously, second albums are just tough because nobody knows who you are for your first album, so there are no expectations. Then suddenly, there's this small group of people with expectations who want something from you, and if you can't quite deliver that, they're going to be disappointed. I'm not a person who handles disappointment very well-

[laughter]

Samia: -but it was an important experience for me to grow.

Alison Stewart: It's interesting because I think for first albums, you've had the songs for so long. You've written them, you've wanted to record them, and then your second album comes around and you think like, "Well, I'm not the same person I was when I released my first album."

Samia: Totally, and you don't want to do the exact same thing you did, but you also don't want it to be too much of a departure. It's just finding a sweet spot and it takes your learning in real time in front of these people who got on board for the first record. Yes, it's just like a really complicated learning experience.

Alison Stewart: What did you take away from the second album that you were able to apply to the third album?

Samia: That's a good question. There were some moments where I was able to speak really plainly about certain things in my life and conversationally, that I didn't do on my first record that really resonated and felt good. I was able to take that with me, but ultimately, I just circled back to my process on my first record, which was writing poems and Tetrising them into melodies.

Alison Stewart: You're going to perform one more song for us. What are we going to hear?

Samia: It's called Dare.

[MUSIC -- Samia -- Dare]

Samia: When I touched you, I felt the current of your dare

I think you wanted me to feel it

Because you know we're the same

Two shades of good paint all spread thin by the vision

Blended so the hands resist him

Keeping his dare away

He comes adorned in vacancy and staring blankly

Your nails tapping on the dry cell

I'm imagining they're weapons

Breaking the glass letting the fates capitulate

From this side I will always understand

The way that you protect him

I will always understand

The way that you protеct him

I will always understand

The way that you protect him

I can't stop crossing thе line

You can't stop trying to keep me on the other side

If only you could read my mind

I can't stop crossing the line

You can't stop trying to keep me on the other side

If only you could read my mind

I will always understand

The way that you protect him

I will always understand

The way that you protect him

I will always understand

The way that you protect him

I will always understand

The way that you protect him

I will always understand

The way that you protect him

I can't stop crossing the line

You can't stop trying to keep me on the other side

If only you could read my mind.

I can't stop crossing the line

You can't stop trying to keep me on the other side

If only you could read my mind.