Get all 10 Sam Moss releases available on Bandcamp and save 25%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Shapes, Three Oldies, Neon, Fable, Pitkin County Morning EP, No Kingdom, The Tempest May Howl, Neighbors, and 2 more.
1. |
Shapes out of the Dark
01:57
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You were unprepared
For the way the world came down on you
With a dull heavy blow
That youthful glow was knocked out of you
The unwilling masses stood in the shadows
You beckoned and none came
Sleeves pulled to wrists
And other weak tricks for hiding
Nothing like this
Could put words on your lips for trying
Denying your name
Just part of the game for playing
It’s only life
And you’re holding the knife for making
Cutting shapes out of the dark
Making doors out of nothing
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2. |
Opening
03:04
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The rarest of openings
In the kindest of places
Words spoke between
Adornments and praises
When victory comes
It doesn’t offer much
But hey the eye of the beholder
And all of that stuff
Your laughter is like diamonds
Preciously shining
A sly mouthed mumbler
With New York City timing
How good to see the sparkling
And the ticking of your heart
How good to know you
The darkest alleys
My walls of confusion
Two idiot kids
Drunk on collusion
Simples renditions
Hazy apparitions
Screaming to the dark
Beyond our own recognition
It cuts with a violence
Through the heavy August silence
Lungs fully winded
Still young in their mileage
How good to see the glowing
And the weakness it upends
How good to know you
The rarest of places
Where all is delivered
A little bit blurry
A little familiar
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3. |
Ballad in Fm
02:59
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You look just like him
Or close enough anyway
The curl of your grin
The fading away
When you broke your body
How did you keep such a beautiful voice
When you said goodbye
Like honey and gravel, the road that you traveled
Worn in the knees
Your shoulders are slumping
You now claim to believe
In a higher god or something
But when you weren’t afraid
To what sky did you turn
When you opened your mouth
For soft incantations, offers of patience
You gave it all out
And still you are giving
Through the window a shout
And a new kind of living
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4. |
Morning Light
02:18
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It is morning, you are near me
Standing close, speaking clearly
Light rushes in, the morning light
Through blinds in little fragments
The winter coming swift again
Asks nothing, simply wanders in
Making small, cutting trim
Darkening the dark
And in the vacant dusk
I whisper, wonder, wait for what
Is waiting there invisibly
That beckons time to tick
Our days will not be long enough
To say I had known your touch
Enough as to be satisfied
Or wonder what is next
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5. |
Proclamations
03:40
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Time has not been kind to me
As it has been to you
Yet the beauty shifts inside of me
It doesn’t leave, it just moves
I’m not one for proclamations
But we are desperate ones
Desire outlines all of us
To go wandering after the dusk
Give every gift, give even blood
And say, ‘hey hey honey, is this enough?’
With all the time that has been spent
Some might say I’ve a poisoned mind
That when I show my crooked teeth
I am smiling, left behind
Yet when you push me back into
The home I humbly made
We show a kind of loveliness
That for each other we have saved
I’m not one to intuit the endings
I’ve heard eventually come
Yet words spoken on dark days and Sundays
Say there may never be even one
I’m not one for recitations
So let me say this once
Desire outlines all of us
To go wandering after the dusk
Give every gift, give even blood
And say, ‘hey hey honey, is this enough?’
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6. |
Fever Dream
02:58
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I don’t believe in myself or you
At least that’s what I said at the end of the day
Before the sky gave birth to the moon
Cut the hurt in half, left something clean
I don’t believe in the moon or the sun
At least that’s what I thought at the setting of each one
Before I figure a reason to run
Won’t you, won’t you
Shake me out
Pull me down
From this fever dream
I don’t believe in the kindness of strangers
Wasting air on the forming of words
Is it the silence that keeps me from danger?
I’ve no need to be heard
Been looking for a new occupation
Away from my mind
Beyond all of this self-preservation
Is there an offering I could find?
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7. |
Ways
02:26
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The mounted mirror
Spoke to what the cold had done
The raw cold of expectation
The sting of lost creation
As if newness could be goodness
Every time without a slip
As if the words he gave you
Didn’t bind you, make you trip
The error in our ways
The callousing of hands
The turning of days
Clear away
The fogging of the glass
Say, did it happen often
That in that clearing was a blossom?
If only dark would grant the access
To the turning of the wheel
Toward the hopeful evolution
Away from the reverence you feel
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8. |
Sunday People
03:04
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Above all the din
Of these reckless Sunday people
You spoke loudly in my ear
In a melody so gentle
Was a timbre I had known
And not so well forgotten
The space it made, less house than home
With warmth and crackling of the autumn
Brought back to the picture
Like blinking, waking up
I turn from you to cry
Someone please wish me good luck
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9. |
Talkers
03:37
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I was not patient, I was not slow
It was an accident, I didn’t know
I was not here as I thought I’d be
Yet I was alive, however unlikely
Listening to the talkers
All snarling and wise
I was not nothing, I was not air
I breathed a deep breath free from care
I was an angle beside the void
And in the absence I was employed
Listening to the shouters
All echoey and soft
I was not simple, I was not smart
It was an accident, my aching heart
I wasn’t angered, somehow I wasn’t mean
The earth was burning, a rumbling scream
Listening to the dreamers
All asking for nothing much
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10. |
Hymnal
05:23
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Some people die and you wish they wouldn’t
Some people don’t but you never think about them
I am alive at the time of this moment
Looking for a mantra or a hymnal
Busted trees bend in stormy weather
Passing by the window, heading to the ether
I catch a little air, try to feel a little cleaner
Try to catch a mantra or a hymnal
You come to me as if I have something to offer
I’ll speak it slow, speak it sweetly, speak it softer
Angling for an answer, a trick to turn, or something faster
Angling for a mantra or a hymnal
If seeing is believing I am doubtful of belief
I trust nothing I am seeing, step away and I retreat
But if you could give an offering that could give itself as simple
Maybe I could find a mantra or a hymnal
Trash lines the earth and we look for other places
When I feel your honest touch, it renders me quite graceless
I am crumbling at the towers as the universe around us dwindles
Looking for a mantra or a hymnal
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Sam Moss Staunton, Virginia
"Marvelous, resonating, magnetic stillness." - Boston Globe
I also carve spoons
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