The Bird Calls is the musical project of Sam Sodomsky, a writer (a Pitchfork contributor for many years), based in Brooklyn, New York. For a long time, he self-released lots of albums that he recorded at home with just his acoustic guitar and vocals. Since 2022, his approach has expanded and his albums have arrived via Ruination Record Co. Sodomsky released near 40 albums since 2011.His latest, Melody Trail, came out on February 7th, 2025. It features eclectic, colorful production by Ryan Weiner and the sharpest songwriting of Sam’s career. The lyrics are characterized by wry quotations, traces of frontier Americana imagery, and an inimitable cocktail of melancholy, nostalgia, humor, and stone-tablet wisdom about the natural rhythms of self-actualization and disappointment.

What He Says: “The record definitely was inspired, partially, by losing a media job. I don’t think I sat down to be like, ‘I want to hear a song about a guy who loved his job and lost it.’ But then, things like ‘Critic Meets Artist’ happened. And I was like, ‘Well, this seems like my feelings on it are top of mind lately.’ Maybe these are songs that speak more directly to those things than ever, just because it felt so visceral to me last year.”

“Set to a laid-back shuffle that draws inspiration from the Grateful Dead, the lyrics channel dream-logic imagery and a nod to The Smiths through a series of climactic reflections on moving forward.“

His Mixtape:

John Hiatt – Ride My Pony

More than most, John Hiatt lets himself wander. His records can span a lot of moods and subjects and modes of songwriting, but then he’ll knock you out with the clearest-eyed, hardest-hitting vision in the game. This song from 2008 kinda tells the whole story in the form of a tidy little Western.

Paul Simon – Night Game

I like the way Paul Simon sings about sports in this song. It maybe feels like a metaphor for aging in the music industry. The storytelling, nestled within this gorgeous melody and snowy arrangement, feels like someone whispering about a bad dream in the middle of the night while they can still see it in their head.

Mia Doi Todd – Strange Wind

Haunted magical realism from one of my favorite songwriters. The storytelling is simple but layered. The chord progression complicates and nags at the narrator’s every movement.

Tanita Tikaram – Once And Not Speak

This song has something wise to say about intimacy, and she expresses it almost entirely through her vocal delivery.

Drakkar Sauna – Not Ideas About The King But The King Himself

A 21st century folk classic. I don’t really follow what’s happening in the story but it seems like a cautionary tale.

Mott The Hoople – Ballad Of Mott The Hoople

Best opening couplet of all time: “I changed my name in search of fame to find the Midas Touch/Oh, I wish I’d never wanted then what I want now twice as much.”

Sammy Davis Jr. & Laurindo Almeida – Speak Low

If you, like me, hold the Sinatra and Jobim record above all other recorded music, then you will be pleased to know this collaborative album between a Rat Pack vocalist and Brazilian guitarist is just as good and even sadder and sparer. Also the mastering is impeccable.

Trashcan Sinatras – Weightlifting

Exhaustion and relief. Momentum and isolation. It begins with the invention of the wheel and works a pun into the title. This song has it all! 

The Album

“It can be difficult to liken Melody Trail to anything you’ve heard, let alone another Bird Calls release. The trappings of Brooklyn musician and writer Sam Sodomsky’s previous albums are all here, but there is a porousness to the imagery which Sodomsky allows to shape these stories, largely inspired by the increased reading and writing of poetry. He trusted that the impressionistic touches would add to the emotional throughline rather than subtracting from it. It provides an extra layer of confidence in the music that translates to the arrangement as well. In his lyrics, Sodomsky sketches airfoils to observe the currents in life, looking for logic within the naturally-occurring entropy that derails our best-laid plans week to week, blessed day to blessed day. Sodomsky trusted that the open-ended, sometimes prankish spirit of these songs would be enhanced by producer and multi-instrumentalist Ryan Weiner. A singular talent in the Brooklyn music scene, Weiner co-founded Tiny Hazard (with Alena Spanger) and has recorded with Ruination artists like Kitba, Sarah Goldstone, Office Culture’s Winston Cook-Wilson, and more. Weiner is a master architect of spacey pop tapestries and ingenious sonic detailing; in anything he works on, unusual juxtapositions provide an element of surprise and elevate the songs’ drama. The duo’s treatments often resist mirroring the emotional situation of the songs, bringing out deeper, stranger resonances in Sodomsky’s text, underlining certain points and blowing out the metaphors underscoring them. A wide variety of reference points were discussed in the process, none of which the songs exactly sound like: The Beach Boys’ eccentric ’70s electro-pop masterwork Love You, the fried and genre-hopping psychedelia of Ween, and Sodomsky’s recurring urtext Tunnel of Love by Springsteen.”

Melody Trail is out now via Ruination Recording Co.. Look HERE for more information on The Bird Calls.