About

Over the course of seven years and three critically acclaimed albums, Bloomington, Indiana’s Sam Lowry has slowly been perfecting his unique brand of dark Americana, sharpening the cut of his voice and deepening the impact of his words. 

Lowry’s autobiographical lyrics have always been fearless in their examination of the complicated relationships of the everyday. The small, noble, and not so noble, reasons we choose to be with others. The commitments of guilt, the despair of solitude, the belief in love, and all the rest.  Never has this been truer, than with his fourth album, Songs of My Enemy.

Songs documents the end of Lowry’s eight year marriage, his year of whiskey driven self-therapy, his eventual reconciliation with himself, and as he puts it, his need to “get on with it”.  The result is not only his strongest work to date, but is quite frankly, a stunningly honest and beautiful album. 

Musically, the album occupies the kind of adventurous gothic American territory traveled by (smog) and Sparklehorse.  Helping Lowry complete his vision is a veritable who’s who from the fertile Bloomington music scene; including Sarah Balliet and Adam Turla from Murder by Death, Kate Long from Early Day Miners, Ben Bussell (ex-Mt. Gigantic), Nathaniel Seer and Kit Malone, as well as Megan Morrison and Troy Daugherty from Nashville indie-rockers Duraluxe.

Lowry has spent a good portion of the last several years on the road. With over 300 shows ranging from basements, coffee houses and dive bars to festivals like MACRock and Bloomingtonfest and dates with bands such as Murder by Death, the Good Life, Early Day Miners, Azure Ray, Mock Orange, Lucero, Codeseven, Vedera and the Hackensaw Boys.  He also spent the year prior to the release of his third album by taking a break from the road, and busked in the subway and on the streets of Seoul, South Korea. 

More traditional touring is in the works to support Songs of My Enemy through out 2006 and 2007, including a CD release tour supporting Murder by Death, the Appleseed Cast and Unwed Sailor.

Press Quotes:

CREATIVE LOAFING Dark, brooding, tasty stuff.

CD BABY A creative, dark and deep venture into the shared musical crevasse of artists like Nick Cave, Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen. Sparse, empty and despondent, this album slowly oozes its voice from its pores, dropping pools of dark, liquidy hopelessness into a deep well of bottomless imagination. With incomplete thoughts and scattered pieces of wisdom, Sam Lowry weaves a shadowy but stirring album for those who are in no hurry to understand.
SPLENDID E-ZINE If every singer-songwriter had this much power behind such an economy of words, we'd probably all have a higher consciousness by now. Maybe that's what Sam Lowry's nudging us toward, one breathy, retributive melody at a time.
THE PIN-UP Lowry works his songs like small garden snakes, getting the lot primed and ready to strike the hand of another who thinks he can easily charm them. All notions of rustic, or alt.country or what-have-you seems kind of moot by now, and even more when Lowry lowers voice to that parched sing-song vocal.
CITYBEAT With a deflated, Leonard Cohen-like grumble and an unexpected musical backdrop that blends together traditional acoustic instruments like banjo, guitar and fiddle with warm yet tricky drum loops and vintage-sounding keyboards, Lowry has concocted an honest, dark and surprisingly melodic exercise in aural subtlety that works to maximum effect. His textural, slanted and poetic take on Roots music gives new meaning to the phrase "American Gothic."