It’s no exaggeration to say that once I heard Samuel, I included at least one of their songs on every mixtape I made. My internal tuning forks resonate so deeply with the music they made during their brief career: in the raw mix, dueling guitars struggled to assert themselves as note-y basslines drove complex, often non-repeating song structures forward. All the while, singer Vanessa elbowed her way into the din, sometimes competing with guitarist J’s gruffly melodic backing vocals. The songs were—and are—deeply complex and emotional, but imminently listenable. Here, their entire recorded output from the ’90s is collected: two singles and a split with Texas Is The Reason, seven songs total, remixed and remastered. And I worried before hearing it. I was so used to hearing their scrum of competing parts that I was apprehensive a new mix would fuck up their delicate chemistry—fuck up my memories, all the lonely car rides up and down Route 95 listening to their stuff dubbed onto one side of a cassette. But! The new mix maintains the band’s complex chemistry while bringing clarity to complicated passages. Hopefully this reissue (and their new stuff!) brings them back into the minds of discriminating mid-’90s emo and indie listeners, because Samuel S.C. are a beacon of heartfelt and uncompromising music. –Michael T. Fournier (Org)