Announced: Zoh Amba – Eyes Full + ‘Another Time’

Zoh Amba will release their debut album Eyes Full on June 5th. It is an album of tough and soulful songs that feel like a pure transmission from the heart. A first preview can be heard now with the first single ‘Another Time’, out now. Watch the accompanying video here.

Eyes Full is distinctly, instinctively tied to Zoh’s hometown of Kingsport, Tennessee and the rediscovery of their first instrument, the guitar. The album courses with a type of muddy, loose acoustic blues, punctuated with bursts of feedback-laden electric guitar and sweet burnishes of Appalachian folk. It’s a remarkable turn for an artist who has already become one of the most exciting saxophonists to emerge from NYC’s avant-garde scene.

In music, Amba is always striving for greater proximity to the divine. On Eyes Full, they’ve never come closer. Every song circles the idea of seeing and being seen. The record looks closely at the lives of working-class folk in small towns who bust their asses off while trying to find any salvation they can. “I hope these songs touch people’s hearts,” Amba says. “They’re about people who really need to be seen and heard.”

For years, Amba tried to find an identity outside of where they came from. Raised in the mountain towns of Tennessee, they left at seventeen for San Francisco, then moved to New York City soon after. Yet no matter how far they traveled, home always wrapped itself around their ankle. “When you try to run from something it ends up catching up to you,” they say now, speaking in a thick Southern drawl they no longer attempt to hide. “And you have to deal with it.”

Though Amba had long believed that pure instrumental music could help souls, and that transcendence could be reached without language, words eventually pushed their way in. While playing saxophone, they often felt as though they were being carried heavenward: their body burning, tears rising, the music opening a direct line to God. But alongside that ecstasy came flashes of darker childhood memories. The guitar became a way to face those visions directly, to hold them at eye level rather than flee. They sang their way through it, and back to Kingsport.

Growing up, Amba watched their small town pass through a difficult, destabilising period. For a time, they tried to keep that reality at arm’s length, only later recognizing how thin the line was between themselves and those who suffered most. They grew a greater sense of grace and understanding for these people. Each song on Eyes Full, which is entirely character-driven — from the kid benumbed by medication (‘OCD’) to the weed-eating man who plays hide-and-seek with God (‘Weed Eating’) — is an act of love for them. “They all deserve to go to heaven,” says Amba, rejecting the punitive theology that surrounded them in the Bible Belt. Songs about damnation never made sense to them; what interested them instead was mercy, and the possibility of redemption.

The record was tracked live at Drop of Sun Studios in Asheville, an hour from Amba’s hometown, with no overdubs. Their best friend Kevin Hyland plays electric guitar, while drummer Jim White, whom Amba met on the streets of New York years earlier and now calls the closest thing they’ve had to a family, plays drums. The three musicians rehearsed relentlessly, playing together all day, every day, “until we got real tight,” says Amba. White and Amba play interlocked, while Amba and Hyland weave around one another, Amba playing rhythm and Hyland playing lead; currents of life running alongside one another.

Eyes Full is a lesson in how to look and to stay open to the universe, and to all the hearts that inhabit it. Through Amba’s gaze, the album restores spirit and dignity to those who are often overlooked or dispossessed. Across Eyes Full, Amba sings for people who rarely see themselves reflected back with tenderness. The music carries an ache for communities pushed to the margins, for those growing numb or losing touch with their innermost sense of self. These songs insist on sustained attention: on looking closely, meeting another person’s gaze, and refusing to look away.