Samora Pinderhughes Unveils New Track 'Drown'

Acclaimed pianist, composer, vocalist, and multidisciplinary artist Samora Pinderhughes has unveiled a new single, “Drown”, with a video co-directed with frequent collaborator Christian Padron.

The track is the second taken from his forthcoming, two-part album Venus Smiles Not in the House of Tears. The first LP of the series is set for release October 18 via a collaboration between Pinderhughes’ own Machel Records and Good Cloud Day—presave/preorder here. This marks the debut release for Good Cloud Day, headed by the former director of 37d03d and the Secretly Group.

The video for “Drown”, shot on 16mm film, sees Pinderhughes engaging with water both as a cleansing mechanism and as a metaphor for emotional overwhelm, featuring slow-moving shots that emphasize portraiture and vulnerability. “Drown” tells the story of a person reckoning with how their relationship to desire is complicated by their struggles to understand their own emotions. Pinderhughes softly pours his heart out with personal lyricism, peeling the veil away on his internal monologue and speaking on the shared experience of mental health. He croons, “Never compromise what you need / I feel like a mystery to myself / No sound, no sound, Around, around / They say life is what you make it / So I’ll try not to drown.”

In support of the new album, Pinderhughes has confirmed a slew of new US and Europe tour dates, including two nights at Blue Note in New York and stops in Los Angeles, Boston, Philadelphia, DC and Seattle. In Europe, Pinderhughes will perform at the London Jazz Festival and make stops in Germany, Netherlands, and Poland. Tickets will go on sale Friday August 30 at 10am Local Time, purchase here. 

This is the mantra of Venus Smiles Not in the House of Tears, the third full-length effort from Samora Pinderhughes. Made over 8 years with loving detail and written entirely by Pinderhughes and his longtime producer Jack DeBoe, the album is a deeply personal exploration & reflection of mental health in the modern age. It tells a non-linear story about a relationship that didn’t last, and the lessons learned through it. How can love exist when grief is in the way?

Venus is an open-genre exploration of music-making itself with wide-ranging production and a dynamic landscape of feeling and spirit. A Juilliard-trained pianist, composer, and vocalist, Pinderhughes weaves a cinematic quality throughout; songs about depression, anxiety, social pressures, forgiveness, and healing take on the musical details of their stories. From quiet, contemplative piano pieces to hard-hitting and soulful full band jams, to expansive and full-throated choir celebrations, Venus is a fitting accompaniment to a multitude of daily human experiences.

Featuring musicians & singers from Pinderhughes’ tight-knit NYC community including his sister Elena Pinderhughes (flute), Joshua Crumbly, Kyle Miles (electric bass), Burniss Earl Travis (electric bass), Gabe Schnider (electric guitar), Riley Mulherkar (trumpet), Andy Clausen (trombone), Jehbreal Muhammad Jackson (vocals), Brad Allen Williams (electric guitar), Elliott Skinner (vocals) and more, the crew represents a wave of new artists who thread the ethics of detail, honesty, vulnerability, and care into their work.

Says Pinderhughes of the album, “Mental health isn’t solitary; it’s about how our feelings, fears, traumas, and conceptions of self meet the world around us. Like so many, I’ve struggled with depression, anxiety, and isolation within a complicated matrix of identities. I wanted to make a project that would be brutally and lovingly honest about what it feels like to try to sift through the debris of time. A project that really engages with what it means to love, in the midst of a society that teaches us all the wrong lessons,” he continues, “Hopefully through the prism of these songs, you can feel something that resonates with you in your own life and experience.”

These have been a landmark few years for Pinderhughes, who has collaborated on several albums that were nominated for the 66th Annual Grammy Awards, including Aja Monet’s when the poems do what they do—of which Pinderhughes wrote and played on the entirety of the record—and Meshell Ndegeocello’s The Omnichord Real Book featuring Pinderhughes’ original song “Gatsby.” He has also received IDA and Cinema Eye Honors nominations for Best Music Score for his work as the composer, pianist and vocalist on Michéle Stephenson and Joe Brewster’s documentary, “Going to Mars: the Nikki Giovanni Project,” which earned a place on the Oscars shortlist and was nominated for an Emmy.

The announcement of the new LP follows Pinderhughes’ latest album, GRIEF, which was released in 2022 as part of Pinderhughes’ The Healing Project to widespread praise from The New York Times, NPR, Forbes, KQED, San Francisco Examiner and more. Listen to the record here.

Photo credit: Sonia Broman

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