Sophie Jamieson Shares “Downpour”
Last month Sophie Jamieson announced her debut LP Choosing due for release 2nd December via Bella Union. Today, Jamieson shares the albums second single titled “Downpour” which also comes with a video directed by herself and Ros Bullard.
Commenting on the track Jamieson says: “This song came from a desperate need to fill a void I could not seem to fill myself. I wanted to fix, and be fixed by somebody who was in no position to do so. I was blinded by this idea that they were the way out of my pain, and when they said no, the walls came tumbling in every time and I didn’t know how to hold them up.”
Building desperation ripples through Sophie’s voice, hovering above a gentle piano before things escalate, the track conjuring the energy of an approaching storm, one that constantly threatens but never seems to burst. The cold hard reality of love-not-welcome hits like hard rain, throwing the protagonist into the stormy abyss of non-belonging. “It’s a desperate song, full of need that doesn’t know what to feed on, and love that doesn’t have a place to go,” Sophie says.
“The video was filmed at my local riverside in South East London. I was fascinated by the movement of water and everything that changes its direction and its force. The way it both moves around, and pushes against everything it touches… even pushing against itself and eventually calming down. The way it has the ability to create space, and also to overwhelm, to drown.”
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.
“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.”
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.
