The smoke from fireworks has cleared, and now you can start your post-Fourth of July morning reflecting while listening to “Don’t Like Surprises” by Sammy Kay. The song centers around observing human interactions from afar and building your own intricate story for the characters in your mind. Like fellow New Jersey native Bruce Springsteen, Sammy Kay pens songs that drum up imagery and feelings of Americana in a way that transports you directly into the story and “Don’t Like Surprises” is a perfect example of it. It plays like a clip from a movie – some beat-up pick-up truck cruising down an endless Mid-western road surrounded by fields, a never-ending cigarette in hand, and dreaming up a future that isn’t quite yours. “Don’t Like Surprises” is the third and final single before the release of Sammy Kay’s new album, July 1960, on Friday, July 19th. Vinyl pre-orders for July 1960 are available from Sell the Heart Records (US) and Engineer Records (UK). Listen to “Don’t Like Surprises” now and follow it up with the previously released singles “How Fast to Run” and “Greyhound Bus.”
Bio:
Sammy Kay is familiar with the stories, songs and the tapes of those who walked before him in the lineage of the Jersey Shores musical history.
On his new record, July 1960, Kay went back to basics and looked in the mirror.
With this collection of songs, accompanied by John Calvin Abney and Cory Tramontelli, Kay stripped down the songs lyrically, and developed a dreamscape consisting of pianos, pedal steel guitars, and strings to shape every feeling possible to weave in and out of Kay’s sandpaper voice, which Rolling Stone describes as “the sound of a guy who has seen some shit and come out the other side, maybe a little less intact than he was before.”
American Songwriter describes Kay as “the sound of the deserted Seaside Heights boardwalk in the winter, abandoned by the summer tourists from the city, steeped in the creeping depression of the vacated Jersey shore.”
FFO: Bruce Springsteen, Dave Hause, Chuck Ragan, Jason Isbell
