And then comes the operatic death, the dénouement, in “Dying at the Hands of Love.” Samson is a beautiful and elegantly structured piece of art. This is a concept album for those who still take the time for things like concepts. “Dying at the Hands of Love” feels like Samson’s life flashing before his eyes, the narrator revealing the simple Sunday story to actually be a windswept scatter of glowing and complicated fragments that still throb and swell like fireflies in the American night. Here, we feel the play coming to an end, the strings as sweet as a harp, ominous foghorn notes bellowing from the upright, Troyer’s howling anguish echoing the young Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes insofar as his studied pain is admirably at war with itself while, only too late, discovering that self-consciousness was itself a blinder, a part of both the problem and that final, artistic solution.
“She met you at the crossroads,” Troyer writes. “Empty as a belly. In your grocery of choices, your liturgy of options, she was just a number.”
If this is Delilah, located at the archetypal “crossroads” intersection of blues music, then this woman’s original sin was simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Is it possible that Delilah didn’t want to weaken Samson but, instead, just wanted to see if he could see what was right in front of him? Is it possible that nobody, after all this time, ever bothered to ask Delilah what she wanted and that her deceit might just have something to do with being deceived or, worse, ignored? The epic loneliness of this album and this particular song begs the listener to return to the cross, the crossroads, the woman, the walls, “the stoplight Christmas trees,” and all the devilish hollows of contemporary Christianity and America. Troyer here quietly urges the listener to go back in their own mind to those luminous moments and those first naked encounters and somehow summon the wisdom to see past the virginal symbols and divisive tropes and ask about the actual suffering of actual others. Samson, in the end, is a master class on empathy, creating space for those we erase.
-Matt Armstrong
lyrics
In the garden of the parsonage.
You were the preacher in the pot grove,
singing "take your pick"
Like a chorus of a hymn
When she met you at the crossroads.
Empty as a belly
in a grocery of choices
In your liturgy of options.
She was just a number.
Dying at the hands of love.
Driving along a brokedown river bend
Drowning with your fingers crossed
old bridges on the mend
while your only ship is lost.
See the lining of the parking lot.
Melting in the summer sweat.
But what's the harm of fading out if each one owns a spot.
In the asphalt cemetery.
Stoplight Christmas trees.
Is your cotton turned to cobwebs?
Silver lining faded like pearls in a pawn shop.
Dying at the hands of love.
Driving along a brokedown river bend
Drowning with your fingers crossed
old bridges on the mend
while your only ship is lost.
But she would rather a stormy sea
to the hooker's bed of dreams.
She would rather hold your lines like the wrinkle in her palms.
Meet the author of her Psalms.
Hear the ringtone when you call.
Be the garden where she falls
Dirty hands connecting in the tissue of a song.
Dying at the hands of love.
Driving along a brokedown river bend
Drowning with your fingers crossed
old bridges on the mend
while your only ship is lost.
That was what I would have said to you
But it's all I ever say to me.
I was drunk and I was tired.
Sick and spinning in the kitchen.
It was a dark and muddy brew that was bleeding in my bones.
But who knew what was bleeding in you?
Who knew what was bleeding in you?
credits
from [SAMSON],
track released August 13, 2021
Tom Troyer - Songwriter
Evan Campfield - Upright bass
Caleb Baer - Strings
Mark Byerly - Keys
Tom Troyer - Electric bass, electric guitar, and synths.
Recorded, mixed, mastered by Tom Troyer - Black Rabbit Audio
Farewell Friend is a North Carolina based folk rock band. Farewell Friend’s music is first and foremost an exploration of
poetry and narrative
Tom - singer, songwriter, guitar
Evan - upright bass, moog, rickenbacker
Caleb - violin and telecaster
Zac - drums
Featuring Kevan Chandler on harmonica and Galen Clark on mandolin.
Soulful guitar interplay form the heart of this lovely Americana collaboration from Dave Alvin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore. Bandcamp New & Notable Mar 2, 2018
