Honey

""Can I tell you something? I've never felt so unworthy of loving," Samia mournfully sings to introduce us to her second album 'Honey', a wise and wilting record about that painful part of coming of age where you have to figure out how to stay alive with all the fears you haven't grown out of. The New York songwriter could be compared to the likes of Olivia Rodrigo or Phoebe Bridgers for her confessional, piercingly vulnerable indie-pop, but on 'Honey' her warmth and candour is singular ... A young woman's worst confessions and deeply revealing truths (...) somehow, here, find a path towards hopefulness, where so often we are conditioned to lie in the sticky discomfort of hatred. What a bold thing to acknowledge that horrible but changeable reality, in all its silliness and searing pain, with as much shattering power as Samia does".

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"Honey opens with an emotional bang on the candid "Kill Her Freak Out," whose simple keyboard accompaniment highlights a jealous narrative and lyrics like "I've never felt so unworthy of loving" alongside threats of violence framed as fleeting thoughts. The album moves quickly to the demurer "Charm You," whose midtempo indie pop, '90s-evoking double-tracked vocals, and lilting bridge protectively reject affection ... At this point, the album's just getting started on the emotional spectrum, and Samia goes on to adopt a sparkling, dance-oriented electro-pop on the insecure "Mad at Me," gentle folk-rock on the reassuring "To Me It Was" ("a good time"), and a rock club singalong for the self-loathing "Honey" before arriving at the contrastingly earnest "Dream Song," which closes the set with imagery of nature, blood, iron lungs, and death ... Whether autobiographical or a thought exercise, Honey is evocative and often relatable, if in turn inevitably alienating and mercurial".

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"On her second album of raw, deliciously sad indie-rock, Nashville-based Samia constantly flits between blackly comic confessionals and excruciating bloodletting (...), zooming in and out of tales of broken relationships, toxic behaviour and addiction in ways that feel diaristic and uncomfortably relatable ... Playful, painful and loaded with hooks that worm their way to the surface, Honey feels ripe for bleak midwinter wallowing".

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"Honey opens with an emotional bang on the candid "Kill Her Freak Out," whose simple keyboard accompaniment highlights a jealous narrative and lyrics like "I've never felt so unworthy of loving" alongside threats of violence framed as fleeting thoughts. The album moves quickly to the demurer "Charm You," whose midtempo indie pop, '90s-evoking double-tracked vocals, and lilting bridge protectively reject affection ... At this point, the album's just getting started on the emotional spectrum, and Samia goes on to adopt a sparkling, dance-oriented electro-pop on the insecure "Mad at Me," gentle folk-rock on the reassuring "To Me It Was" ("a good time"), and a rock club singalong for the self-loathing "Honey" before arriving at the contrastingly earnest "Dream Song," which closes the set with imagery of nature, blood, iron lungs, and death ... Whether autobiographical or a thought exercise, Honey is evocative and often relatable, if in turn inevitably alienating and mercurial".

Read review

"On her second album of raw, deliciously sad indie-rock, Nashville-based Samia constantly flits between blackly comic confessionals and excruciating bloodletting (...), zooming in and out of tales of broken relationships, toxic behaviour and addiction in ways that feel diaristic and uncomfortably relatable ... Playful, painful and loaded with hooks that worm their way to the surface, Honey feels ripe for bleak midwinter wallowing".

Read review

""Can I tell you something? I've never felt so unworthy of loving," Samia mournfully sings to introduce us to her second album 'Honey', a wise and wilting record about that painful part of coming of age where you have to figure out how to stay alive with all the fears you haven't grown out of. The New York songwriter could be compared to the likes of Olivia Rodrigo or Phoebe Bridgers for her confessional, piercingly vulnerable indie-pop, but on 'Honey' her warmth and candour is singular ... A young woman's worst confessions and deeply revealing truths (...) somehow, here, find a path towards hopefulness, where so often we are conditioned to lie in the sticky discomfort of hatred. What a bold thing to acknowledge that horrible but changeable reality, in all its silliness and searing pain, with as much shattering power as Samia does".

Read review