Said Sara tries to hold on to a moment with new stark new acoustic ballad Same and its accompanying video — showcasing today on Tinnitist.
Recorded at The Guest Room and Yosemite Studios in Said Sara’s hometown of San Francisco, and mastered by Jesse Nichols at The Atomic Garden West in Oakland, the singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist’s latest release is a richly dark and cathartic song about the torment of wanting and missing, and how we torture ourselves even further to crush those feelings. Over a bed of acoustic guitar, banjo, and piano, Said Sara (aka David Benson) effortlessly carries Same with his raw, pointed vocals — which recall Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen and Cat Stevens — and darkly poetic lyrics:
“Skinned alive
Your rapier lips belie
You’re sweeter than shaved ice
The one breath of life
Was holding hands with you
Now every moment’s spent in an attempt at feeling
The same.”
Penned after Benson rearranged songs by Belly and Sinead O’Connor for a solo acoustic performance, Same is a genuine outpouring of emotion.
“The music for Same wrote itself to a large extent and was completed in less than a week,” Benson expands. “The lyrics proved to be a more strenuous undertaking. I had ideas about the strains of missing someone, and the blurry sentiments attached to emotional concealment and heartache, and the ways in which we torture ourselves even more inside that torment. In addition, there’s the concept of trauma: Suffering is represented through vocal images of witches, warriors and goddesses and how they give tragic affection and receive death.”
Born and raised in San Francisco, Benson grew up listening to 1970s singer-songwriters such as Jim Croce, James Taylor and Lindsey Buckingham. Through the ’90s, he wrote dark, stripped-down hymns that would eventually appear on Said Sara’s self-titled 2020 EP. Prior to launching Said Sara, Benson performed in the now-defunct post-punk-pop band Transition, whose 1994’s Spine LP was released via SST Records. He also performs in the S.F. death metal outfit Acephalix, whose 2022 album Theothanatologist was engineered by Grammy winner Greg Wilkinson and topped numerous year-end lists.
Following singles I Star As You (2020), Bleedways (2021), Sea (2022), Same is Benson’s most intimate and catchiest release to date. When he is not performing, Benson is a special ed teacher at a public high school in San Francisco.
Watch the video for Same above, hear more from Said Sara below, and find him at his website.
