Sonos talks with Samm Henshaw about his new album ’It Could Be Worse”
This album is titled “It Could Be Worse”, which feels both self-aware and gently optimistic. What was happening in your life that made this phrase feel like the right emotional anchor for this project?
I think it sums up the past few years of myself and my families life, the album is putting the past 4/5 years into perspective and allows me to sum it all up into that phrase, we’ve been through a lot these past years, my mum without both of us realising helped inspire that title, her optimism through the face of the losses she experienced inspired me to look at my situations in a very different way.
You’ve decided to release the album on vinyl first, which naturally encourages slower, intentional listening. What does ‘intentional listening’ mean to you - and why does experiencing an album front-to-back still matter in a world of playlists and skipping tracks?
When we made the album we cared about the journey of the album, we intentionally made an album and wasn’t focussed on the singles, even picking the singles wasn’t an over thought out process. When you write a book you don’t write it with the intention of people seeing one chapter, you want them to have context, every song that was written, was written for full consumption not to shuffle through and then make a conclusion. I also miss the experience of having a body of work and looking at the credits and I wanted people to enjoy it that way. Experience the art in a tangible physical way.
Do you remember the first time you heard music that changed depending on the sound system? Has that influenced the way you record and mix your own work today?
I don’t remember what I listened to but I do remember working on my first album untidy soul. I would give every song a car test and it would feel completely different to how it would sound in my headphones. Since then I began to notice all the details of an actual mix and want to make sure people have the best experience when consuming what we create.
You’ve spoken before about joy being central to your creative practice. How did you protect the joy in the making of this album, especially if you were working through harder themes or personal growth?
The process of creating the album was what made it joyful, the first half was hard but then it became cathartic releasing my feelings in my art, it was a very insular process small team of people all working towards one goal and that became joyful.
Were there any specific songs or arrangements where you and your engineers said, “People really need to feel this” - knowing the warmth, the bass and live instrumentation really comes alive on good speakers?
All of the songs but mainly Closer and Sun and Moon in particular as they were finished songs but I just wanted to make sure those songs felt a certain way musically we added string arrangements to them and that added layers to the songs that we knew would only truly be experienced through good speakers.
If someone is listening to “It Could Be Worse” on Sonos for the first time - on vinyl, lights low, uninterrupted - what do you hope they take away from that first full listen?
Whatever they want to feel, satisfied like when you consume a good movie or any piece of art, I want them to feel a myriad of emotions, I just hope they feel something because a load of music these days doesn’t envoke an emotion or feeling we just numbingly consume., I just want people to take time and feel something.
