Although he’s probably best known as the keyboardist of the acclaimed Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada-based indie rock act Wintersleep, Jon Samuel is also a solo artist and multi-instrumentalist in his own right, releasing his debut album First Transmissions back in 2012. His forthcoming solo record Dead Melodies is slated for a February 1, 2019 release through Hidden Pony Records/Believe Digital, and the album is reportedly a much more collaborative effort than First Transmissions as Samuel and his Wintersleep bandmate/producer Loel Campbell recruited Wintersleep’s Tim D’Eon (guitar), Halifax-based roots rocker Matt Hays (guitars), Stars‘ Chris Seligman (French horn) and Walrus‘ Keith Doiron (bass) as the Dead Melodies session band. Sonically, the album is reportedly centered around adventurous musical eclecticism and an emboldened songwriting process, revealing an artist, who is willing to wade into difficult subject mater; but more important, the album is Samuel’s pledge to do better — both as an artist and as a human being with the hopes that the album and its material will inspire you as a listener to do the same. (Lord only knows, we all should be doing so much better.)
Dead Melodies latest single, album title track “Dead Melodies” is a rousingly anthemic track based around arena rock-like power chords, a propulsive rhythm section and a soaring, shout along worthy hook that actually turns the song’s title into a proud, defiant badge of stubborn defiance and survival rather than defeat. “When I wrote the song, it was a couple of years after I had finished making a record that nobody listened to,” Samuel explains in press notes. “I just wanted to write a song about how art and music are undervalued—it’s literally worth nothing in a lot of cases. You make a record, spend a lot of time and money on it… and then it’s basically just free. And disposable, too, because there’s just so much of it. So that was the basic idea of ‘Dead Melodies’—I’m going to put this out there, and maybe nobody hears it, and it might be worth nothing!”
