Winnipeg's Sam Singer has announced a new full-length album called Where the Rivers Do — arriving June 4, it's the follow-up to 2022's From the Hills, Beaten Roads, Down to the Trees EP.
Alongside the album announcement, Singer has also shared the video for lead single "Two Trees," which features contributions from drummer Ben Stokes, pianist Holly Stratton and bassist Sam Fournier. String duo Savant Flaneur — cellist Nathan Krahn and multi-instrumentalist Gage Salnikowski — also lent their talents to the song's shambling, Klezmer-inspired swing.
The song's video, helmed by Dog Days Film Co., features Singer and friends in a time-warped dream place. In a statement about the video, Singer said:
We had this idea of making a quilt, and I sew a fabric which turns into a map, and then, somehow, I get transported into the quilt. In my mind, it's set back in the day, but it really doesn't matter, because there is no time… this quilt is being sewn, and this is the memory of what existed within there.
Where the Rivers Do was written in 2022 between Vancouver, Los Angeles and Winnipeg, and is described as being "inspired by distance… an exploration of Singer's relationship to the vocabulary of classical folk traditions: wandering, searching, and finding."
"I saw a video of Bob Dylan talking about how he was born very far from his home, and that in his music and his travels, all he was trying to do was to make it back to wherever it was that he came from," Singer explained in a statement. "I found myself at the beginning of my own mini odyssey, going to SXSW for a film I was in. It was a great excuse to visit my aunt in Los Angeles, and to take the time to write this album."
The album's title sprung from an exercise in which Singer imagined how Leonard Cohen would invite someone to the Forks, the ancient meeting place in the heart of Winnipeg where the Red and Assiniboine rivers cross paths — the place Where the Rivers Do.
Check out the video for "Two Trees" and see the Where the Rivers Do tracklist below.
Where the Rivers Do:
1. The Deal
2. Traitor Birds
3. Golden Day
4. Two Trees
5. Born in June
6. Mirror in the Sunrise
7. Eve of the Morning
8. For a Second
9. So, It Is
10. Midnight Horse
11. It Is the Next Time