Samson Wrote - In Season (2025) Hi-Res

Hailing from Bear River, Nova Scotia, Samson Wrote (aka Sam Boer) crafts honest, straightforward observational songs from the North Country, sometimes with experimental more modern musical twists than your average folk song, but within the genre just the same. He has a new album just out, In Season, produced by JUNO-award winning producer Scott Merritt. Rising above standard song construction, Samson Wrote’s songwriting reflects on the way childhood observations, expectations and behaviors of family and society, and the mundane repetitions of life mold us, and then he points to the way we later break out of those molds.

These are songs that are easy to appreciate as they narrate simple observations that we all experience. “Trying to Make a Meal” has the utterly relatable lines on the despair, of all things, of eating: “There are / Two bananas with spots of black / And a couple cups of rice are left / Inside their burlap sack.”

Sam’s vocal richness is fully in evidence in the next one, a music onto “Leafblower / Everybody’s Mom”: “You called me on the phone / While I was biking / I wasn’t listening / No I wasn’t even trying / I was watching a kid / Chasing after a swan / Thinking everything with wings has had / A human treat it wrong.” The songs contain a darker depth of realism within their lighthearted forms of expression.

“Divine Hand” is a good representation of what Samson creates. After singing about a woman yelling at her 4-year old while filling a pool with a garden hose, there are honest, gripping emotional observations: “So I want a divine hand to / Force me to choke myself / I want a divine hand to / Force me to control myself / But I want what I want.” The musical pace is lightly cabaret with a dramatic flair, without the music actually being cabaret, as he pierces through the veil of superficialities in life’s innumerable little moments.

In “Assumptions,” he takes aim at the assumptions that we will all live the same life pattern: having a child, buying a house, etc. “There’s an underlying assumption / We’re gonna have a kid /
And there’s an underlying assumption / I’d be a good dad if I did / Ordinary expectations /In extraordinary times / Planting seeds for a future / That’s half yours / And half mine.” Indeed, they do seem to be plastic and artificial assumptions in the modern situation where so many things are threatened and in dire straits.

Singing in a fashion that hearkens a bit to Will Wood, “Having a Baby” chronicles what’s essentially one weekend of support you get when you’re having a baby and then, considers where in the world are we going to fit all the babies born on the planet. And then later: “Fighting with your mom is the most beautiful thing / Everybody’s yelling / Everyone knows it will end / And it will be this awkward catharsis / A day or a week where / All you can think, is / We’re not even fighting.” And ultimately, “knowing when to stop is the most beautiful thing.” The nylon string guitar sometimes sounds like a ukulele on this one and the chorus harmonies are excellent.

Sam also takes aim at the Catholic Church in “Catholic University”: “Force and violence / Force and violence / Sparked by hands but / Forged by silence.” There’s so much in life that’s really farcical, and Sam Wrote unmasks many of those layers.

The songs are fresh, slightly tongue-in-cheek, and speak truths. There’s a warmth and a theatrical dimension and then the hard candor follows in each one by turn.