Sam Cohen shares “Let The Mountain Come To You” from forthcoming solo debut via Paste

“I’m Sam Cohen, and I’ve been making records for kind of a long time. The first time, I was 18. I wrote angsty songs about my girlfriend leaving me and recorded them along with some rockabilly and mambo covers in several midnight to 7 sessions in Houston, TX. I moved to Boston to learn some chords, formed a band, and made a record in two days. It was horrible. We redeemed it with a home recorded EP that nobody ever heard. The guitars were phenomenal.

That morphed into Apollo Sunshine. We spent a year making a record that was weird and fun, though, at that time, we were singing like some gladass castratos. We spent the next two years touring ceaselessly. I think we might have been pretty cool at that point. Dirty dogs. Life on the road. America. The Band.
 
We moved into a farmhouse and made our most boring record. It was the most successful thing I’ve ever done. We released a third album to soft applause and broke up. A few years later, people started to admit to liking, even loving it.
 
After that, I was living in Brooklyn and started Yellowbirds to be more of a solo thing. I made records I still like to this day. I made stop-motion collage videos to accompany the music, and started to put a little world together. It’s still there on the internet. I got to do some stuff, too: The National had us at All Tomorrow’s Parties, my bandmate Josh and I played with Bob Weir (several times), we toured a bit, Rolling Stone wrote about me (.com, whatever).
 
So those Yellowbirds records were pretty good, and people started asking me to produce their records. I worked on a ton of albums; playing, producing, engineering, collaborating in many different ways (sometimes with famous people).

I started to hear what I sound like, so I became Sam Cohen and made my latest record, Cool It. It’s mostly just me alone in a room, playing guitars, drums, bass, synths, singing, recording in both haphazard and elaborate methods. A few songs have my beloved Yellowbirds bandmates (Josh Kaufman, Annie Nero, and Brian Kantor).
 
If you’re reading this, you’re on the internet, maybe thinking about listening to a single mp3 by an artist you’ve never heard of.
 
Well Hoss, take her for a whirl. I stand behind this shit.”

Photo by Shawn Brackbill

TOUR DATES

 

2/05 – Brooklyn, NY – Palisades
2/12 – Brooklyn, NY – Shea Stadium

 

Sam Cohen

Cool It

(Easy Sound)

Street Date: April 28, 2015