Do you know about the strange phenomenon of bovine excision,” Samia Finnerty asks. I’ve never heard of it, I tell her. The 28-year-old singer-songwriter’s eyes light up because she’s the first person to tell me about the weird extended metaphor she’s used for her third album under the artist name Samia, Bloodless. Farmers since the 1970s have found their cattle completely drained of blood, their mouths and genitals removed with surgical precision and the appearance of bioluminescence under their skin. “Read about it, you totally should,” she encourages me. “Some of it has been disproven but there are inexplicable elements to it that I felt was a perfect representation of my experience of womanhood.”
These emptied-out cattle sound like a macabre way to explain how as a woman she has embodied something both untouchable, distant and laid out for wondrous display. But it’s par for the course for an artist who, since the release of her cult debut album The Baby in 2020, is frequently compared to emotionally deep articulators Mitski and Phoebe Bridgers, the latter of whom she supported on tour back in 2021. In a world oversaturated with guitar-based indie-rock ballads, her distinctively warm and raspy voice stands out. The diaristic metaphors and sunny sonics collide with sombre explorations of heartbreak, personal growth, and everyday healing. Maybe it’s simply that she does it better than most; watch her stripped-back Tiny Desk performance for evidence of the bare-bones of quality songwriting.
