Samia – ‘Bloodless’ review: a sublime songwriter sets a new bar

Apr 25, 2025 - 09:16

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Samia

Since the release of her debut album ‘The Baby’ in 2020, Samia has become known as a songwriter with a knack for the diaristic and the vulnerable; an artist who is profoundly relatable by being highly personal, distilling the complexities of young womanhood into lines that sear. Second record ‘Honey’, released in 2023, only reinforced that notion, infusing more dark humour into songs full of pain and poignancy.

On ‘Bloodless’, she takes all that and applies it to her loftiest topics yet – the idea of the dream woman as an unsolved mystery, whether our true selves are just a social construct and the emptiness that’s left when you remove all the experiences that have shaped you, how she’s constructed herself in response to what she thinks men want. Those all combine on opener ‘Bovine Excision’, Samia desiring to be “drained bloodless” like the titular unexplained phenomenon of cattle being found mutilated, but not one drop of blood spilt; an urge to remove everything but remain inscrutable.

At the opposite end of the record, she uses a pair of jeans to dissect who she is now, who she once was and who, beneath it all, she really is. “Who was I when I bought these pants?” she ponders. “They’re non-refundable / Now I’m questioning everything I am.” Later, she reveals her conclusion over discordant twangs: “Wanna see what’s under these Levi’s? / I got nothing under these Levi’s.” It’s not a flirty come-on, but a concession that, perhaps, the idea of a true self doesn’t really exist.

“You don’t know me, bitch,” she sings just above a whisper on ‘Proof’, but ‘Bloodless’ at least gives us glimpses at Samia as she dismantles her character song-by-song. On the whirring ‘Lizard’, she fights the urge to be destructive and cause a scene; ‘Craziest Person’ finds her seeking out those messier than her so she can look better. And on ‘Fair Game’, she’s dazzling – a firefly with “no shortage of brilliance / If you can catch me in a clear cup”.

‘Bloodless’ doesn’t just signal huge growth in Samia’s lyrics, but in her music too. It’s an album that’s grand, warm and rich, whether in its most stripped-back, stark songs – like ‘Proof’, which features just the 28-year-old’s voice and a finger-picked guitar – or the thundering eruption of ‘Carousel’ that borders on claustrophobic. It’s also stuffed with ideas. ‘Pants’ could be three different songs, morphing from melancholy indie-rock atmospherics to experimental fragments to a shuffling, Americana outro.

With all that going on, it would be easy for the album to collapse under its own weight; its ambitions proving to be its own downfall. Impressively, though, Samia sorts ‘Bloodless’ into something that not only keeps it together but thrives on its complexities and intricacies. We already knew Samia was a sublime songwriter, but on her third album, she sets a new bar – and then some.