Black Belt Eagle Scout - Sam, A Dream

Music 4 years ago

Black Belt Eagle Scout - Sam, A Dream

Mother of My Children, the debut album from Katherine Paul’s Black Belt Eagle Scout project, is a collection of pensive rock songs saturated with an oceanic mood.

Recorded in the depths of winter, near the singer-songwriter’s hometown in northwestern Washington, it gets its drama from mists and crashing waves—a lush rhythmic force of unruly drums, distorted guitars—with Paul’s voice surfing above it all.

Transparent but weathered, her sound has a beach-glass blurriness befitting an album devoted to many forms of loss and mourning that unfolds in moving, hazy episodes. In each one, she rushes towards the elements of her life that have a salt-water sting to them, approaching every one of them with anthemic conviction.