Sam Carter Artist of the Month Interview

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Gearing up to release Silver Horizon, his fifth album, Sheffield-based singer-songwriter and guitarist Sam Carter talks to us about his distinctive new sound.

Sam Carter is holding up a beautiful hollow-body archtop Gibson ES-125 electric guitar with a sharp cutaway. The guitar’s measured, characterful timbre is at the core of Silver Horizon, his first album since the more chamber folk-focused Home Waters in 2020. “Yeah, I use this one all the time, and I keep it in the same tunings as my acoustics,” Sam says. “I play it like an acoustic, and that was part of the exploration; what happens if you apply that playing style to the electric guitar? I was experimenting with that.”

The sound Sam was seeking is apparent from the first bars of the title track, which opens the record. Clean electric guitar with some reverb comes in to build a stripped-back environment for Sam’s clear voice. “I’ve been thinking about this record and working on it for about four years,” he continues. “It’s been a different writing approach this time. I did a lot of letting the sounds lead where the songs went, which has been a gradual thing for me over time. At one point, it was more like, ‘I’ll write a song about ‘X’, ‘let’s think about a musical concept we can put this subject in’. This time, I’ve been feeling my way with the sounds and figuring out what it feels like and what would work lyrically within it. So it’s been upside down, in a way…”

The album sounds fresh and clean, with the minimal arrangements pitched just right for the songs. It feels like Sam’s most confident expression yet. “I’m feeling good about it,” he smiles. “It was really cool; I kind of locked myself away with my electric guitar for quite a long time, trying to figure out a sound that resonated with me and felt a bit different to what I’ve done in the past. I followed my instincts and it’s come out quite different, but there’s still a lineage, it’s not like I’ve come out with a drum and bass album.”

No indeed, but the minimalist soundscapes that frame Sam’s lyrics are still a reasonable shift from his previous work, even the rockier sounds of False Lights and How the City Sings. “I guess it was informed by stuff that I’ve been listening to,” he considers. “The band Low is one I really like; they do these really epic slow soundscape textures. I’ve really gotten into the Cocteau Twins as well,” he continues, after a moment. “It’s weird; my friend was really into them, and I just never got it, and then recently it hit and I just loved it. So there’s them and also a singer-songwriter called Nadia Reid, who is great. There’s just something about blending a folk storytelling aesthetic with sounds that are a bit more contemporary. I was looking to blend elements of something like dream-pop and slow-core with folkish storytelling; that was what I was aiming for.”

When it comes to the writing, there is a sense of optimism that permeates the album, with songs like We’re Still Here the clearest examples. “The idea behind the record is that there are two types of songs going on,” Sam explains. “There are before and after songs in my mind; one type is being sung from the point of view of somebody looking at a big change on the horizon and wondering how it will work out, feeling hopeful or fearful. Some of the songs are on the other side of that change and that’s kind of what the ‘silver horizon’ idea represents. We’re Still Here is one of the more personal ones; my partner and I go walking a lot, and we did during the pandemic. The song is a reflection of getting through that time, which was really tough for everybody. It’s saying we made it, we’re still here together. It’s one of the most straightforward messages on the album really.”

Another one that springs to mind is the far more serious If You Set Me Free, with its minor key playing and disquieting nature. “It’s about somebody on the verge of making a decision and feeling really stuck in a situation,” Sam says. “They have a ‘this is shit, but I’m scared to make the move’ thing about them. I’m not sure what it was inspired by, maybe some dark Netflix documentary, but what was interesting was it was one that changed completely in the studio. When I first did it, it was much faster and had this delay guitar [effect] a bit like Big Muff by John Martyn, but Andy [Bell, producer] said it wasn’t working. And then, while we were trying to figure it out, I started playing this much slower thing and we all started playing it and did a couple of takes, and that was it. I felt proud of that one because it was like, ‘yeah man, we did it in the studio!’”

When it came to these studio sessions, Sam kept it simple, with bassist Ben Nicholls and drummer Evan Jenkins joining him there and the extra guitar parts from Stuart McCallum, harmonium from Ian Stephenson and backing vocals from Rowan Rheingans being added later. “It is quite stripped back, but it was just that I had the players in mind I wanted to use,” Sam explains. “The core part was done with the three of us, and then we added the other parts later. I knew that would be enough because Stuart is just great at providing those soundscape textures with delays and reverbs. It’s tricky when you get in studios because you can do everything, but it doesn’t mean that you should…” The studio in question feels appropriate, it being Red Kite Studios, situated out on the edge of the Brecon Beacons. “The remoteness was a thing because everyone is busy and I wanted some time to really focus,” Sam says. “I find that really helpful; I want to go and then know I’m going to come out of there with most of it done. There’s something about working in that intense frame that I think focuses people. And it was this beautiful place and this lovely misty, cold week. We stayed in this little residential cottage there and it was really great.”