New Music From John K. Samson – Digital Servicing Only

“John Samson’s lyrics move me with their detail and empathy. He has an ability to explain feelings we’ve all had but couldn’t verbalize. His songs are beautiful, brutal, honest and comforting, all at the same time.”—Craig Finn, The Hold Steady

Since 1997, John K. Samson has written four acclaimed albums with The Weakerthans. The band’s most recent studio release Reunion Tour garnered praise from an assortment of publications including Paste Magazine, who said, “If such a prize existed, it would be the leading candidate for this year’s Punk Pulitzer.”

Provincial, Samson’s first solo release began with a simple idea: to explore four different roads in Manitoba, the Canadian province where Samson lives. “They’re the places I kept going back to.” Samson talked to relatives, friends and strangers; he visited archives, a tuberculosis sanatorium-turned-RV park, a forgotten cemetery. For a video glimpse of Provincial’s prairie roadmap, click here.

The result is this collection of evocative songs, an album that fits beside Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, Sun Kil Moon’s Ghosts Of The Great Highway, Mountain Goats’ Tallahassee. While the teenage craving of “Cruise Night” recalls the Cars, “Stop Error” invokes Bach; for “When I Write my Master’s Thesis,” Samson’s inspiration was all jukebox serendipity—Bob Dylan’s “When I Paint My Masterpiece,” sailing out from the corner of a Yukon dive-bar. Provincial is a record full of fierce, tuneful, vivid stories.

RIYL: Weakerthans, Wilco, Bright Eyes, Death Cab for Cutie, Elliott Smith, Built to Spill

TRY: #7, 3, 5, 8, 10

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