In all of the photographs that accompany Sophie Jamieson’s new album, there is a palpable sense of movement. Buffeted by the elements, by other people, never landing anywhere solid. The inside cover of the record finds her in a double-exposure photograph, caught between worlds, present and not present, both at the same time. It could just be a photograph, but it could also be a metaphor for the deeper parts of her new album, an attempt to capture a sense of anxiety, of unrootedness. To yearn for somewhere but never fully arrive.
Her second LP on Bella Union, I still want to share presents a deeply personal reflection on the cyclical nature of loving and losing, the anxiety we cannot keep out of our relationships, and the perpetual longing for belonging that drives us to keep trying, and failing, to find home in other people.
If Sophie’s debut LP Choosing explored the self-destructive urge that swells from running away from one’s whole self, I still want to share muscles through, song by song, doing its best to face it. It lifts the lid on the roots of how we love and digs in even deeper, leaning into our deficiencies but doing so from a stronger, healthier place that is much less afraid of the pain that inevitably comes with feeling everything.
Produced in North London by the Grammy Award-winning Guy Massey - known for his work with the likes of Spiritualized, Manic Street Preachers, as well as remastering The Beatles’ back-catalogue - the resulting collaboration feels more exploratory, more playful than Choosing, and detailed with a richer palette. All the raw emotion of Sophie’s songwriting and vocal delivery is joined by some new characters: twinkly, toy-like omnichord, brooding layers of harmonium and sub-bass, as well as rich string arrangements - courtesy of Josephine Stephenson (Daughter, ex:re) - that weave a yearning connection through the beating heart of the record. “We've made this thing that feels very, very much like me, but there are also a lot of different sonic flavours,” Sophie explains. “There’s a lot of warm autumnal colours, and then more glittery, dark, starry skies. Something about it all has really come together to illustrate some things that I didn't know I needed to articulate in this way.”
The album opens in stillness, the brooding ‘Camera’ gently shifting into focus over the first minute or so before the guitars build and the drumbeat shuffles in and Sophie’s layered vocals bring a sense of dramatic unravelling as the song swells to a noisy, coruscating finale. Lead single ‘I don’t know what to save’ feels altogether lighter, but more a gigantic exhale or a gust of wind, the track building toward an exhilarating peak as it tumbles forwards. “This song was a running break for freedom,” Sophie explains. “I was carrying the weight of my attachment to a person and all the pain entangled with them, but here came an out-reaching, a burst of energy and glimmer of hope. It was an enormous push towards letting go.”
Elsewhere, ‘How do you want to be loved?’ is one of the album’s most spirited instrumental backdrops, all bubbling synths and fidgety percussion, that set a colourful atmosphere for the record’s emotional peak. A deep battle of trying to forgive and understand, the song documents a draining attempt to see humanity and complexity in those we love the most, when all we are able to summon is anger and frustration. Coupled with ‘Baby’, one of the album’s quietest moments, the two songs anchor the album’s weaving themes of control, attachment and heartbreak. Both songs grapple with the role of parental figures - reversing them, turning them inside out and blurring the lines between care-giver and child.
Then there’s ‘Vista’, a woozy ballad and a sweeping reflection of what it can mean to fall in love. An intensely dizzying time that can somehow be both electrifying and lonely all in one fluttering breath, it chronicles how easy it is to lose yourself to it all, when you are constantly seeking footing in another person. “I found myself painting this picture of a long car drive along cliffs under empty skies, constantly ruining everything, always asking for too much.”
Throughout I still want to share, Sophie takes the enormity of the word ‘love’ and peels back its layers. Underneath, she finds a number of the themes that return across these songs: that loving so often feels like control and need, that being loved can be excruciating when it means having to face yourself. That simple, pure, unanxious love looks like sharing, generosity and space, and that this love is so elusive in adult life. “I think what holds this record together is the idea of attachment rather than love,” she explains. “The clinical, less romantic nature, the ugly nature, but also the very human nature of that.”
The title track pulls this idea into focus as a child’s desire slips through the brooding arrangements: “the magic of a tie that you don’t have to fight for / ear for an ear and an eye for an eye / I guess I’m lucky that this is all mine / but I still wanna share sometimes”. The unsuppressable hope that there is a softer, purer, simpler kind of love out there is the force that pulls through the record and keeps us coming back to love again, despite the constant risk of everything falling apart.
I still want to share sits now, as a reckoning with the futile desire of perfection and solid answers, in terms of what we ask of ourselves, and what we ask of those we love. The questions asked throughout are painful at root level, the answers only ever swept away with the wind. After all, as the closing track croons, “time pulls you over backwards, deep beneath your age” and thus at the end we find ourselves back at the beginning, young, old, all at once, ready to try again. Despite it all, we still look for love and we still want to share.
