Sam Feinstein’s music is undoubtedly unlike anything I’ve heard in my life. Impossible to define, deliciously approachable with an apprehensive edge, standoffish, odd, cheeky, and endlessly entertaining, Sam Feinstein returns with ‘Maslow’s Mountain’, everything art pop should be.
Sam Feinstein is a San Jose-based bassist who rolls with a few bands in that area, chief among them is The Monitors, who play ‘Maslow’s Mountain’ and ‘Hamster Wheel’, Feinstein’s latest single, as part of their live sets. Naming Tom Waits as his first influence made so much sense to me -it certainly made pieces fall into place, and it would be the same way for anybody who checks out Feinstein’s songs and find themselves taken aback by the corroded, gritty, and abrasive industrial edge to the man’s voice, which he is unashamedly putting in the forefront of the funk-ridden arrangement.
It takes courage for a singer to realize that the weirdness of their voice can be their primary selling points, and Feinstein has loads of courage. ‘Maslow’s Mountain’ has a purplish, hazy playground of a mix, with the melodic chord sequences pit against sharp jazzy pangs of dissonance, themselves pit against jumpy and psych-funk inspired synths and wah-wah heavy guitars -a quirky mix to put it mildly, a terrific one to put it properly.
Sam Feinstein is not here to sell us a mere oddity. Not at all. Indeed, the man knows how to write a fantastically tight song, and his quirks only heightens all of the musical choices he’s making. I bet the landscape in Feinstein’s head has some truly novel colors.
