CD review: Samantha Crain "Kid Face"
From Friday’s Weekend Look section of The Oklahoman.
Folk/rock
Samantha Crain “Kid Face” (Ramseur Records)
Her distinctive croon and literate lyrics are as potent as ever, but Oklahoma singer-songwriter Samantha Crain layers a palpable vulnerability on “Kid Face,” her most autobiographical album to date.
With her third LP, Crain, 26, courageously channels her personal heartbreaks and breakthroughs into her usual poetic folk/rock, giving the 11 songs added emotional veracity. The Dale High School graduate’s music has always been imbued with earthy authenticity, but she uses personal experience to hone her pen to an even finer point with “Kid Face.”
Crain wrote all 11 tracks and recorded them at producer John Vanderslice’s all-analog Tiny Telephone studios in San Francisco, which only boosts the rootsy warmth already inherent in her sound. The troubadour emanates self-confidence and determination with the first single, the jangly folk kiss-off “Never Going Back.”
On the shuffling confessional “Taught to Lie,” the Shawnee native shows off her penchant for erudite and evocative lyrics like “If you take Anderson Road, you’ll find a box that I have stowed / Behind an old Conoco sign that’s shiny silver in the night / And in the box there is a stone and a little red rattail comb / And seven motel keys, and a souvenir penny / Because I don’t forget the past.”
