CREDIT: SAMANTHA SAVAGE SMITH
She co-produced the album with some help. Check out Samantha Save Smith's Fine Lines available January 27.

I write about random things a lot. I write a lot about random things. The digital music era has had an unmistakable impact on many tenets of the music industry – album releases dates are less rigid than ever. People discover music on YouTube because record shops are becoming harder to come by.

Yet one thing remains the same: the dreaded curse of the sophomore slump.

It’s something every performer has faced at that crucial junction in their career, and the pressure has made itself known over the decades through shaky records and band dissolutions. However, this is a story of triumph and determination, and one that begins in Calgary in 2012.

Samantha Savage Smith received a lot of attention following the release of her first album Tough Cookie in 2011, from magazine covers to performances on CBC Radio, even being praised as Calgary’s best of the year.

For her new album Fine Lines – available January 27 – Smith chose to face the pressure head-on by challenging herself to become involved at every level of the production.

“I think it was just meant to be,” she said. “I just really wanted to give myself the opportunity to try it – this is what I’m making, and this is how I want it to sound, and I can just take full responsibility for it.”

Co-producing the record with band member Chris Dadge, Smith immersed herself in her work and began demoing new material in a modest studio in her basement. Taking their time, Smith and Dadge shaped the record from the early demos and made a clear plan for when the time came to return to Arch Audio Studio late in 2013.

“It’s definitely quite helpful to have the outside opinion, to produce a record fully on your own would be really hard,” Smith said. She compared the making of Fine Lines to her experience with her debut. “The songs were pretty much fully formed by the time we got into the studio, because we were either playing them already as a live band, or we did a demo in my basement.”

At just over 30 minutes in length, Fine Lines gives listeners a broad sampling of indie style that belies the time and effort that went into it. The album displays a keen focus and a broad musical vocabulary, evident in highlight tracks like “Higher Than Above” and the title single. Highly listenable, the urge to repeat the album sets in around the same time that the memorable track “Habit Forming” seemingly arrives too soon.

It’s fitting that the album is titled Fine Lines, as the material within treads gracefully between folksy pop and the kind of jangly, no-frills alternative that rose to popularity in the early 1990’s. Difficult to define perhaps, but from the cascading riff that opens “It’s A Burn” to the jazzy close of “Skyline” the record offers a lot that sounds equally at home on a playlist between 10,000 Maniacs, the Cranberries and REM as it would between Norah Jones, Say Hi or Feist.

“I’m really proud of it,” Smith said. “It was a lot of time, work and money.” It was inspiration that guided her throughout the making of Fine Lines, and looking forward to music down the road, the only muse she cares to chase.

“I would fully be into something new if the opportunity strikes, or if it seems like the right thing to do. I would also be totally happy to do it again this way too, we’ll see. I already have quite a few ideas for the next [record], so I’m pretty excited. I’m already working on it.”

For more on Smith and her new album Fine Lines, visit samanthasavagesmith.com or follow along on Twitter @samsavsmith. She performs in Toronto at the Belljar Cafe on March 12. Doors open at 9 p.m.

And for more of the latest music news, album streams and concert previews, follow this column on Twitter @fsu_bobbyisms. This week also marks the announcement of the official 2015 Juno Award nominations on January 27 – visit junoawards.ca or follow along on Twitter @thejunoawards on Tuesday morning to see the list of nominees unfold. I’m out of words.