Review: Sam Sample leaves quite an imprint with ‘I’m Moving to the Moon’

You undergo tremendous transformations when you’re young. It’s the natural order of things that when you hit your early 20s, you experience the brutality and beauty of life. You might know exactly where you’re going, or what it all means, or your place in the grand scheme of things, but you take risks. You challenge the status quo and receive whatever the universe bestows upon you. There are dizzying highs and harrowing lows, and in between, you dangle with the consequences – hoping that what comes next will be a blessing and not a curse. With her debut album, I’m Moving to the Moon, Sam Sample captures the unpredictable inertia of her early 20s through intensely vulnerable songs about hope, loss, and life’s invigoration.

Sample’s voice is as sweet as lavender, as you witness immediately with opening track “What I’ve Got on You.” Her timbre is silky, yet somehow ruthless and thorny with each unfolding chapter. With life’s swift, relentless modifications, she remains truthful and honest in the eye of the storm. Her vivid portraits (e.g. “Western Mass”) strike electricity to the core of you. While her stories are hyper-focused on her experiences, there are kernels of truth burrowed deep inside that transcend time, place, and gender. “Better Things,” containing a fiesty giddy-up, sends campfire smoke into the night air, while “Stubborn Ways” pricks the fingertips like a sewing machine’s needle. There’s a conviction that seeps from her bones and onto the recordings that you just can’t teach. Sample demonstrates impressive vocal habits that rise evocatively and cleanly into the eardrums.

Across 10 songs, Sample fills her songwriting with gushing wisdom and blushing clarity. “I feel maybe I was meant to be a moon man,” she sighs with the album’s closer. “Moon Man” punctuates the record like an ethereal glaze, as though it has all led to this one moment. With its crystalline exterior and Sample’s aching vocals, the song pours out of her. It’s all she’s got left, and it emerges as a reminder about life, loss, and unwavering determination. Her experiences funnel into all parts of herself, and it’s within three minutes that she transmits her soul’s ringing declaration.

Sam Sample’s I’m Moving to the Moon arrives this Friday (October 11) as quite a statement piece about self, identity, and the expected unpredictability of life itself. She might have changed tremendously throughout the process, but she at least learned a thing or two that she has now captured in her work. That should be admired. Now, she can fly even higher.

Follow Sample on her socials: Instagram