With her debut album Choosing due for release 2nd December via Bella Union, and having previously shared the tracks “Sink” and “Downpour”, Sophie Jamieson shares LP highlight “Runner”.
Commenting on the track Jamieson says: “This song is a note to self, not to leave the body just when things are getting hard. It’s catching yourself, looking yourself straight in the eye and in that honest moment there comes real life, real release, real joy. I wanted this song to feel like the heart opening up and all the colours coming out.”
Additionally, Jamieson has announced a number of new live dates including a performance at Mutations Festival in Brighton and an album release day show at Rough Trade West in London.
Friday 28th October – Nottingham – The Metronome
Thursday 3rd November – London – EartH (Bella Union 25th Anniversary show)
Saturday 5th November – Brighton – Mutations Festival
Friday 2nd December – London – Rough Trade West (album launch show)
Released via her new home at Bella Union, Choosing is a strikingly personal document of a journey from a painful rock bottom of self-destruction, to a safer place imbued with the faint light of hope. It’s an album that sings openly of longing and searching, of trying, failing, and trying again – and always and throughout, the strength of love in so many varying forms.
Following on from the pair of EPs she released in 2020, Choosing finds its own shape by a subtle reforming of Jamieson’s sound into something both organic and simpler. Sophie describes the songs on those two EPs as “black holes” and while Choosing covers similar ground it never takes its eye away from what lies beyond, never fully releases its grip even when everything is telling her to let go.
“The title of this album is so important,” Sophie explains. “Without it, this might sound like another record about self-destruction and pain, but at heart, it’s about hope, and finding strength. It’s about finding the light at the end of the tunnel, and crawling towards it.”
Produced and engineered by long-time collaborator Steph Marziano (Ex:Re, Lapsley, Hayley Williams) and mixed by Isabel Gracefield, Choosing asks the listener to look deep within their own selves, to show them that they can take whatever pain they’re experiencing, and choose, to some extent, how they let it affect them; whether they let it burn them down or whether they choose to look it straight in the face.
