The Bird Calls’ Sam Sodomsky On His Exquisite New LP And Prolific Musical Output

When it comes to making records on a prolific and diligent basis, the New York City-based singer-songwriter Sam Sodomsky could give Neil Young a run for his money. Under the moniker of The Bird Calls, Sodomsky has recorded and self-released a staggering 30 albums over his music career. And that is in addition to his day job as an associate editor for the music website Pitchfork.*

“I was always making music,” he explains about his astounding productivity. “I did it all on my laptop. Back then, I was really into working as quickly as possible and making as much as I could. There are a lot of those albums that maybe spanned a week or two of writing and recording. Now I’m maybe in this one-album-a-year zone where I’m working a little more deliberately. Though at the same time, in 2021, I put out three records. So who knows what this year will bring.”

Adding to The Bird Calls’ growing discography is the gorgeous and folkish My Life in Hollywood, which was released in December. The record is a departure from Sodomsky’s previous DIY recordings in that it was made for the first time in a recording studio and featured guest musicians such as bassist Charlie Kaplan and keyboardist Winston Cook-Wilson. Its expansive yet intimate sound—delivered with Sodomsky’s warm and eloquent vocals—represents a progression from 2021’s Tarot, The Bird Calls’ first-ever release for the indie label Ruination Records.

He explains that his previous way of making music involves Garageband and Microsoft Word on his computer. “I’m writing the song, guitar in my lap. When I’m done writing, I record it and the song is done, and I move on to the next one. It’s how I made all my records. And Tarot was a thing where I put out two records that year, and I had a few songs left over and a bunch of free time. I really got into this flow and I wrote what to me felt like the best songs I’d ever written [for Tarot], just like one after the other.”

Sodomsky began work on a new album during the first half of 2022 but then decided to shelve it. Collaborating with producer/musician Ian Wayne at the latter’s recording space in Ridgewood, Queens, Sodomsky had planned to re-record some older Bird Calls songs as studio versions for a retrospective release. However, he recalls, “by the time the next session came up, I had written “My Life in Hollywood.” That was one of those songs that was in my head [when I woke up]. I sat down and I wrote it and finished it. When I brought it in the next week, I could tell Ian was really psyched about it. It was beginner’s luck where everything we added on made it sound better, exciting and different. That song unlocked this whole thing where it was like, ‘Alright, let’s scrap the whole idea of doing a compilation and let me write more songs that we can build in the studio together.’”

Sonically, My Life in Hollywood the album immediately conjures up a number of references: a long-lost ’60s hippie-cult record, ’70s Laurel Canyon troubadours, and Elliott Smith (among the artists on Sodomsky’s radar while he was recording the album included Bruce Springsteen, Pat Metheny, Aztec Camera, Mia Doi Todd and John Denver); Sodomsky’s impressionistic lyrics evoke feelings of romance, irony, nostalgia and melancholy as evident in such songs as “The Apology Rag,” “Better Investments” and “Auditioning for the Part.” He says that the songs for the new album—some of which were used from the earlier scrapped project—connected to him because they were written within a very quick time span.

“When I wrote “My Life in Hollywood,” that was what unlocked the tone I wanted to use. I think that song’s kind of funny, sad a little bit. I like that it ends with a seduction, an invitation. It’s all in an effort to try to write well about intimacy between people and relationships—I think that’s what most of the songs are about.”

Some of the lyrics from “My Life in Hollywood” reference other songs, such as John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)”; Terry Jacks’ “Seasons in the Sun”; and Rod Stewart’s “Every Picture Tells a Story.” “I like writing songs where there’s a challenge,” Sodomsky says, “that the song exists in a world where other songs exist. If I sing a line about a river or a lake, I can’t pretend like I’m the first songwriter to say that. I feel like I want to challenge myself to have songs that are in conversation with other songs. Also because I’m a critic, I’m used to being in conversation with art. I wrote “My Life in Hollywood” as a song about a sellout—someone who used to be a little more subversive and had grown to be more comfortable and stuff. So it was only natural that it would play with hippie language.”

Sodomsky considers “Fragments,” a track from the new record featuring jazz guitar by Katie Battistoni, a lyrical breakthrough for him. “To me, that song is kind of about the way loneliness changes as you get older. Then it ends with the idea of ‘know that I’m listening,’ which was something I was thinking about a lot. Like that line in “Still Life” where I say, ‘Open up your heart to me, I want to see the broken part.’ That’s the kind of intimacy I wanted to write about. “New Harbor View” is a similar thing where it’s like when you move into a new place with a partner and you both get the lay of the land—it’s not something you set out to do together. It’s something that you eventually learn together and always share.

““Fragments” is the most elaborate explanation of that in different scenes and settings,” he continues. “When I wrote it, I was thinking about Bob Dylan’s “I Want You.” [The demo version of “Fragments” is] really rollicking. But when we played it in the studio, it was a lot more lounge-y and relaxed. I’m really proud of that song. If I was recording that alone in my apartment, which I did as a demo, it would be a totally different thing.”

Hailing from Reading, Pennsylvania, Sodomsky has been obsessed with music since childhood; he developed his guitar playing throughout his adolescence and later joined some rock bands. “I got really excited by making weirder, quieter stuff,” he says. “I started recording as The Bird Calls maybe in 2005 when I was 12 or 13. It was just a recording project. I was always making stuff. Sometimes it was me fooling around on a guitar and then putting a ton of effects on it.”

Sodomsky moved to New York City in 2014 to study at Columbia University’s nonfiction MFA program; it was also in the Big Apple where he found friends who were musicians and put him on bills with them. Around this period, he started writing for Pitchfork where he has reviewed numerous albums by artists as diverse as Bruce Springsteen, Taylor Swift, Genesis, King Crimson, Phoebe Bridgers and Bob Dylan. To him, being a music critic informs his own songwriting.

“I think I have a very underlying belief that I don’t impart a lot of magic in the art of songwriting. I’m not very precious about it, which is part of why I work so quickly. I enjoy writing a song that I know isn’t perfect because it’s more getting the idea out, and getting to the next one is what’s exciting. But I do impart a lot of magic on the act of listening and thinking about music and enjoying it. That’s what I love about being a critic—it’s hearing a record and finding my way through it and trying to put into words why it feels good to hear it or why it resonates.

“Making art is another way to do that. It’s saying, ‘This is a song that doesn’t exist in the world that I want to hear.’ Or, ‘Why has no one written a song that discusses this really specific feeling I have?’ I feel it’s all in an effort to elucidate and put into words things that everyone feels or that people like me feel that there isn’t a strict vocabulary for. That’s why reviewing albums is exciting to me. That’s why writing songs is exciting. It’s all part of the same project, kind of.”

Given his abundant recording output and industrious approach to making music, Sodomsky already has an inkling of what the next Bird Calls album will be. “The idea I currently have for my next record is to do a collaborative thing where I have someone in the role of producer, but I sort of want to give someone more creative reign over the project. I’d really like to do something where I’m just the songwriter and performer, and then I have a producer who has a vision for the sound of it, even if it has nothing to do with my old records. I’d love to get something back in the end that doesn’t sound like something I could have done on my own and that surprises me with how it sounds. I mean, My Life in Hollywood also surprised me with how it sounds. Now that I’ve done that, I’m excited to do something that feels totally different.”

The Bird Calls’ My Life in Hollywood is out now via Ruination Records and available on Bandcamp and other digital music platforms.

(*full disclosure: I previously worked for Pitchfork)