7/10
“Maybe I was born for this / Dying to myself / While you hold the onus / Will you hold the onus?” Samia asks on “Hole In A Frame,” the thematic centerpiece of her new LP Bloodless. She needs the answer to be yes—to have her identity constructed by someone else, and for them to bear the responsibility. For Samia, this “someone else” is men, or more so the concept of them. “I started likening [my relationship with men] to a relationship with God, whose believers are fashioning a lifestyle around His commandments without being explicitly asked,” she wrote in a Substack post.
The project, however, is neither somber nor a critique of the men in her life. Rather, it’s an exploration of freedom, relationships, and identity. “The great thing about God and my Figment Man is that I decide what they want me to do, so in this byzantine way, I get to do what I want while delegating the responsibility,” she wrote in the same post.
Thematically, the record builds on her 2023 album Honey, where she reflected on complicated relationships, celebrated friendships, and engaged in a healthy dose of hedonism. Sonically, though, Bloodless is closer to her alternative pop debut, The Baby, where drums and electric guitars build underneath stylized vocals.
A common thread throughout all three projects is her idiosyncratic lyricism, which is especially noticeable on Bloodless’s opening track, “Bovine Excision.” Here, Samia conjures a fragmented portrait of a relationship through vivid vignettes. She’s overly referential— both self and otherwise—and nothing is off the table: Raymond Carver, Monopoly, and Degas all make appearances on the track. She overanalyzes her own thoughts and loves an abstruse metaphor. “I felt the pea, can I eat it?” she asks, which is really all of the above—a reference to The Princess and the Pea, a nod to her 2018 track “Django,” and her roundabout way of wondering what her reward is for being so sensitive. Still, Samia grounds her writing in blunt observations like “picking leeches off white underwear.” When Samia leans into this style, her writing is at its most compelling. The draw is in the impossibility of knowing what she really means.
These vignettes culminate in Samia’s realization that she “just wanted to be your friend / Cup of tea in your cold hand / And drained, drained bloodless.” To want to be something to someone is synonymous with wanting to be nothing at all. For Samia, however, it’s empowering to be “impossible.”
“Hole In A Frame” similarly explores how not-being is desirable but, this time, to someone else. “In writing it, I was attempting to admit that it’s easier to be an idea than a person; your distorted proxy protects you from going stale,” she wrote in another Substack post where she first shared the lyrics. In the song, Samia recounts how a Tulsa, Okla., venue framed the hole that the Sex Pistols’ Sid Vicious punched into their wall. Like her own emptiness, the hole is only remarkable because someone else decided to make something of it.
For all the reflection Samia does in her writing, her actions remain carefree. “Up on the table, in my headset / Dancing to something sweet,” she sings on standout “Lizard.” Like many Samia songs, it builds slowly as she pieces together a relationship and holds back from ruining a party that “was not [hers] to ruin.” At the song’s peak, Samia guesses what her subject wants from her: “You keep flashing your angle / Like you wanna see mine,” she sings. The song quiets down and she repeatedly asks, “Do you wanna see mine?” over modulated vocals from the chorus. On the track and throughout the album, Samia uses this distortion to complement the themes of obscured identity.
Subsequent tracks like “Dare,” “Spine Oil,” and “Sacred” more or less blend together. They’re enjoyable, laid-back pop songs where Samia finds a line or two that perfectly capture the dynamic of a specific relationship. “You never loved me like you hate me now,” she sings on “Sacred.” But these lines are infrequent, and the songs otherwise fail to capture Samia’s lyrical prowess.
“Fair Game” breaks from the album’s sound as Samia goes country, a style reminiscent of Honey’s “To Me, It Was.” “You can go outside on a hot night and clap / But you won’t get your blood back,” she sings with a slight twang. The line is a reference to futile attempts at killing mosquitoes and an extension of the album’s blood motif. For Samia, retaliation is not a replacement for what people have taken from her.
Bloodless quiets down with “Craziest Person,” where Samia, backed only by an acoustic guitar, reflects on her habit of avoiding her own problems. The subject matter is promising, but uninspired lines like “Or maybe it’s just that the craziest person in the room / Makes me the second craziest person in the room” make it the album’s weakest track.
Still, the project ends strongly with Samia’s strength: tracks that analyze the self. The minimalist “Proof” unpacks her inclination to be unknowable—“And just when you thought you could trust me to leave / You don’t know me, b*tch,” she sings. The album’s upbeat, multi-part closer, “Pants,” articulates the album’s thesis: if you change yourself for others, you never really know who you are. “Who was I when I bought these pants?” Samia asks plainly.
Bloodless highlights Samia’s distinct worldview and eccentric lyricism, but some forgettable tracks and awkward moments suggest her best is yet to come.
