Album Of The Week: Samia Bloodless

"You don't know me, bitch." Near the end of her new album Bloodless, on a minimal ballad called "Proof," Samia Finnerty unfurls those words as defiantly as one can when singing in a trembling whisper. In the most intimate moment on an album full of indie-rock confessionals, this is her message, delivered firmly even at a volume that suggests she's trying not to wake anybody up. It's addressed to a fickle flirt, a guy who loves her "like a child's toy or cigarette," but it's possible to hear that quiet diss as a takedown of listeners who think they've got Samia pegged.

Since she emerged in the late 2010s, it has felt easy for those so inclined to write off Samia, the daughter of actors Kathy Najimy and Dan Finnerty, as another child of privilege riding the zeitgeist to a vanity music career. That's never been the correct read — not when factoring in her knack for memorable melodies and turns of phrase, her well-chosen covers and cosigns from a raft of indie favorites, and the time she's spent honing her craft in music hubs like Brooklyn and Nashville — but it's been an available interpretation. Samia has never shied away from her Hollywood origin story. She put her actor friends in her music videos along with her indie rocker friends from the beginning, and I've always read the title of her 2020 debut album The Baby as a nod toward her status as a nepo baby. But she's been too good for too long to be categorically dismissed for class-warfare reasons.

Bloodless, Samia's third and best LP, affirms her as a true talent deserving of her place in the firmament of accessible, alt-slanted singer-songwriter music. Created with producer Caleb Wright, who worked with her on 2023's pop turn Honey, and Jake Luppen of her longtime friends Hippo Campus, the album plays like a highlight reel of the past decade of big-ticket indie. The boygenius extended universe looms large as usual, especially the conversational, highly referential writing of Phoebe Bridgers. Soccer Mommy's cinematic emotional outpourings and Japanese Breakfast's high-concept indie-pop are in there, as are Haim, Jordana, and all the rest who've improbably made Fleetwood Mac a primary color for this genre. This time around she's added some traces of grit and twang a la Waxahatchee or Big Thief at their earthiest, yet not in a way that punctures the glossy facade.

Crucially, no matter which of her peers each given song might remind you of, it never ceases to sound like Samia, who has developed an unmistakable songwriting point of view. On Bloodless, she's applying that POV to her own relationship with men. Across 41 minutes, her desire to be truly known collides with her tendency to present herself in ways that appeal to the opposite sex. "From a young age I have built my identity and my personality around a set of criteria that I believed -- whether through empirical evidence or hearsay or just my own imagination -- men would like," she explained to The Independent. "The way people worship God, I worshipped this deified patchwork imaginary conglomerate man who had basically dictated who I would become as a person."

Citing the work of gender studies scholar Judith Butler, Samia says she's come to terms with the reality that there's no such thing as personhood apart from social conditioning: "Writing this album gave me an acceptance of how I created myself for this conglomerate deity of a man. It helped me forgive myself for that necessity." Yet the mercy she affords herself does not mean she spares herself from unflattering portrayals. On the album's opening track and lead single "Bovine Excision," she compares her experience as a woman to that of cattle who've been completely drained of blood. On "Fair Game" she's a lightning bug daring interested parties to capture her glow: "I've got no shortage of brilliance/
If you can catch me in a clear cup." The brief but vivid acoustic excursion "Craziest Person" finds her speculating that she seeks out messy people to seem comparatively put-together; it leads directly into the propulsive soft-rocker "Sacred," which begins with Samia passing out naked in a swimming pool.

That song boasts the casually commanding refrain "You never loved me like you hate me now," one of many flashes of concise, effective writing throughout the album. Though Samia's deployment of proper nouns can sometimes take me out of a song more than it draws me in — from the album's opening line "Diet Doctor Pepper, Raymond Carver" to the repeated lyric "Wanna see what's under these Levi's? I got nothing under these Levi's" — she doesn't use the tactic like a crutch. She's at her best when translating humanity's internal mess into quick, snappy phrases. On "Lizard," you can sense her weighing whether to cause a scene when she repeats, almost as if reciting a mantra, "It's a beautiful party/ And it's not mine to ruin/ Don't do it." There's a whole implied backstory behind a line like "Trying to feel hugs from heaven/
Jack off to someone who's pregnant," an image that races past in a burst of brilliant melody during the climax of "North Poles."

Samia's writing ensures Bloodless never becomes an exercise in vacant beauty, but damn, these songs sure are pretty. The arrangements are lush and varied tapestries, and the mix ensures they glide by smoothly, never getting bogged down by the weight of all the gorgeous flourishes. Everything sounds impeccable in a way that will surely go over well in restaurants and boutiques, but there's too much charisma and relatability at the center of the songs for them to be reduced to background music. Sometimes they outright rock, too, be it the pounding toms and snaking guitars that introduce "Spine Oil" or the spine-tingling power-chord bombardment that takes over "Carousel" by surprise.

If it's not already, the song is going to make for a spectacular finale at Samia concerts this album cycle. It's the highlight of a tracklist that loads most of the best songs at the end: a showcase for vivid wordplay, toplines that burst from the speakers, and the raw passion that courses through so much of this music. "I've been rubbing together bramble/ I wanna hitch my fire to your candle," Samia sings. "Pretend to sleep in separate beds at Christmastime." And then, out of nowhere, the song goes boom, drowned in an inferno of distortion. It's not a twist I would have expected from Samia, but Bloodless is an album that suggests the more you think you've got her pinned down, the more she'll surprise you, bitch.

Bloodless is out 4/25 via Grand Jury.

Samia - Bloodless [LP]

23.99

Amazon

Other albums of note out this week:
• Viagra Boys' viagr aboys
• SUMAC & Moor Mother's The Film
• William Tyler's Time Indefinite
• Maria Somerville's Luster
• Deerhoof's Noble And Godlike In Ruin
• Emma-Jean Thackray's Weirdo
• Um, Jennifer?'s Um Comma Jennifer Question Mark
• Fly Anakin's (The) Forever Dream
• Tennis' Face Down In The Garden
• Goose's Everything Must Go
• Smokey Robinson's What The World Needs Now
• Natural Information Society & Bitchin Bajas' Totality
• Sunflower Bean's Mortal Primetime
• Uwade's Florilegium
• Ghost's SKELETÁ
• Rodeo Boys' Junior
• The Raveonettes' Pe'ahi II
• Colin Miller's Losin'
• Jerry David DeCicca's Cardiac Country
• Willie Nelson’s Oh What A Beautiful World
• Dave Longstreth's The Legend Of Ochi (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
• Bells Larsen's Blurring Time
• Jensen McRae's I Don't Know How But They Found Me
• Beach Bunny's Tunnel Vision
• Fatboi Sharif & Driveby's Let Me Out
• Broncho's Natural Pleasure
• Djrum's Under Tangled Silence
• Billy Idol's Dream Into It
• Self Esteem's A Complicated Woman
• Coco Jones' Why Not More
• Prima Queen's The Prize
• Rubber Band Gun's Haters And Lovers
• Fib's Heavy Lifting
• Landmvrks' The Darkest Place I've Ever Been
• Yemi Alafifuni's YHWH
• Ray Vaughn's The Good The Bad The Dollar Menu Mixtape
• Rialto's Neon & Ghost Signs
• James And The Cold Gun's Face In The Mirror
• The Moonlandingz's No Rocket Required
• Mobley's We Do Not Fear Ruins
• Michael Sarian's ESQUINA
• BRUIT ≤'s The Age Of Ephemerality
• JakoJako's Tết 41
• Stereophonics' Make ‘Em Laugh, Make ‘Em Cry, Make ‘Em Wait
• Will Graefe's COMPOSITIONS FOR GUITAR VOL. 1 & 2
• Samantha Fish's Paper Doll
• Jeff Goldblum & The Mildred Snitzer Orchestra's Still Blooming
• Johnny Maraca & The Marockers' Little Heart
• Femi Kuti's Journey Through Life
• H.E.A.T's Welcome To The Future
• d4vd's WITHERED
• Bunnies' Horror Spectrum
• DeathbyRomy's Hollywood Forever
• Rebekka Karijord's The Bell Tower
• Cloth's Pink Silence
• Heart Attack Man's Joyride The Pale Horse
• BIG|BRAVE's OST
• Nazar's Demilitarize
• Machine Head's UNATØNED
• Caliban's Back From Hell
• Chris Brokaw's Ghost Ship
• Friend Of A Friend's Desire!
• Tucker Wetmore's What Not To
• Eliana Glass' E
• Annie A's The Wind That Had Not Touched Land
• Melanie's Lullabies From Heaven
• Wednesday 13's Mid Death Crisis
• Blank Hellscape's Hell 2
• Caustic Wound's Grinding Mechanism Of Torment
• Better:Sweet's Baby Is Back
• Reid Parsons' Back To Back
• Luke Titus' From What Was Will Grow A Flower
• Lila Tirando a Violeta's Dream Of Snakes
• Tàrrega 91’s Ckaos Total
• Gloorp's Gloorp 'Em Up
• Bitter:Sweet's Baby Is Back
• Emma Goldman's All You Are Is We
• Kaleidoscope's Cities Of Fear
• Amanda Mur's Neu Om
• Royal Blunder's Only More Is Enough
• COURSE's Hue Mirror
• AMORE's Top Hits, Ballads, etc...
• The Yagas' Midnight Minuet
• Amira Jazeera's The Amira Diaries
• Kaput's One
• Vendredi Sur Mer's Malabar Princess
• HIMALAYAS' Bad Star
• Lookers' Deeper
• Blaq Tuxedo's Should’ve Seen This Coming
• Destin Conrad's Love On
• Gigi Perez’s At The Beach, In Every Life
• Destin Conrad's LOVE ON DIGITAL
• BabyChiefDoit's ZOO LIFE Mixtape
• Various Artists' Heart Of Gold: The Songs Of Neil Young - Volume 1
• Adrianne Lenker's Live At Revolution Hall
• This Is Lorelei's Box for Buddy, Box for Star (Deluxe)
• Ida's Will You Find Me – 25th Anniversary Edition box set
• Klaus Schulze's Bon Voyage (Live Audimax Hamburg 1981)
• Tre Loaded's LOADED (Deluxe)
• Disciple's Skeleton Psalms (Deluxe)
• Simple Minds' Live In The City Of Diamonds
• Wishy's Planet Popstar EP
• Big Girl's DYE EP
• Jawdropped's Just Fantasy EP
• Nick Hexum's Full Memories EP
• Holy Wave's Studio 22 Singles And B-Sides EP
• LU KALA's No Tears On This Ride EP
• Emma Bradley's Winona’s World EP
• Batu's Question Mark EP
• Erin LeCount's I Am Digital, I Am Divine EP
• snny's caféradio EP
• Roi Turbo's Bazooka EP
• Benicio Bryant's Popstar EP
• Soapbox's Lock In EP
• Mould's Almost Feels Like Purpose EP
• David Eugene Edwards & Al Cisneros's Pillar Of Fire / Capernaum EP
• Rosie Darling's Roomful Of People EP
• Lisa Crawley's New Girl Syndrome EP
• Soft Loft's Modern Roses EP