Canadian jack-of-all-genres band Samantha Martin and Delta Sugar are releasing their new album, “The Reckless One,” this November, after debuting two new singles on Oct. 13. The group released the two singles, “Don’t Have To Be” and “I’ve Got A Feeling,” with accompanying live-studio performance videos.
The 2019 Juno Awards nominated the acclaimed band for “Blues Album of the Year,” and the group also earned four nominations from the Maple Blues Awards in the same year. Though categorized technically as blues music, Samantha Martin and Delta Sugar often seems to transcend our typical notions of genre, drawing influences from gospel, soul, pop and rock from many musical eras.
The band’s music comes from confident and experienced instrumentalists, including a keyboardist, guitars, drums and feeling-building co-singers to Samantha Martin’s powerhouse voice. It’s no wonder she had five nominations for “Female Vocalist of the Year” by the Maple Blues Awards. If you listen to any of the band’s songs for longer than 30 seconds, you can recognize her talent nearly immediately.
The album’s first single, “Don’t Have To Be,” is a thumping and danceable song, with bright horns and a warm-feeling atmosphere created by Martin’s co-singers. The second release from the upcoming album, “I’ve Got A Feeling,” feels like a more traditional twanging soul song. Listening to it conjures the image of a slow-swaying and emotional first dance at a wedding.
Like many musicians that turned the stay-home orders of COVID-19 into extra time for their artistic process, Samantha Martin and Delta Sugar recorded and mastered their upcoming LP during the pandemic.
“After a series of intense tours and big changes in my personal life that left me feeling ungrounded and emotionally raw, I felt intense pressure to write and record another record before we lost the momentum,” Martin said about the band’s process. “Those feelings were channelled into my writing, and it is a deeply vulnerable collection of songs for me.”
The band’s album release is set for Nov. 20, by Gypsy Soul Records. Samantha Martin and Delta Sugar are sure to have unique influences of all types throughout the work, so a listen is sure to appeal to music fans from all walks of life.
