Some artists belong on a stage, and ‘A Beautiful Buzz’ makes the case better than any studio recording ever could. Samantha Martin & Delta Sugar’s new live album, out now via Gypsy Soul Records, documents the kind of performances that leave audiences wrecked in the best possible way.
Recorded during the Love Is All Around tour across Western Canada in 2022, the album captures the raw, sweat-soaked energy that has made this band one of Canada’s most commanding live acts. Lead single “My Crown” arrived first, offering an immediate introduction to what the full record delivers from start to finish.
Martin is a two-time JUNO Award nominee and seven-time Canadian Blues Award nominee for Female Vocalist of the Year, and those numbers only tell part of the story. Her voice is the kind that stops a room, equally at home in a whisper and a full-throated roar, with the control and emotional range to match.
The comparisons that follow her are serious ones. Rhythm & Booze described her as someone whose “name can be talked of in the same sentence as Etta James, Tina Turner, and Aretha Franklin,” calling it “soul for the modern age with a turbocharger.” Paris Move went further, naming her “the new Southern soul tornado.”
Those references aren’t just flattery. The DNA running through Samantha Martin & Delta Sugar’s sound traces back to Mavis Staples, Sharon Jones, Otis Redding, Booker T. & the MG’s, and the Memphis Horns, delivered with a road-hardened urgency that feels entirely contemporary. It’s classic soul filtered through years of stages, miles, and hard-won experience.
Glide Magazine captured it well: “a jaw-dropping display of vocal prowess that showcases this band’s brand of supercharged blues. Like Brittany Howard, Samantha Martin might be the next musical game changer.”
‘A Beautiful Buzz’ doesn’t argue with any of that. It just proves it, night after night, note after note, in front of real crowds who clearly feel every second of it. This is what a live album is supposed to do.