#When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice

[sinceileftyoublog]

Sophie Jamieson Interview: Driving in a Circle

Photo by Tatjana Rüegsegger

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Love is the perfect fodder for pop songs because, like a catchy melody, it feels good to the core, captivating. To make love last, though, you have to nurture it every single day, and when that stops feeling worthwhile, keeping it alive feels like feeding a parasite. It's those painstaking processes that concern the songs of I still want to share (Bella Union), the sophomore album from London singer-songwriter Sophie Jamieson. Her not-quite-meandering, oft-deliberate collection asks why we keep coming back to the romantic connection that has as strong a capacity to hurt us and divert us as it does to allow us to find a sense of home and belonging.

It was important for Jamieson to find arrangements, instrumentation, and production that kept the bare bones of the songs front and center while emphasizing their strongest ideas. Throughout I still want to share, bass and drums creep, and keys and strings shimmer (along with Jamieson's lower-register vibrato), combining to create an overall sense of standstill even if you can pinpoint individual moments of motion. It's the perfect accompaniment to songs in which partners are stuck in neutral, doing things to piss each other off but nowhere near move the needle one way or the other. On the opening track, the narrator breaks a (presumably expensive) camera while trying to take a picture, ultimately accepting that they can't do anything about the mess they've made. "I'm not here to look at you," Jamieson retorts, her voice descending into the strings as if she's disappearing like the love between two people. On "How do you want to be loved?", the narrator views their relationship as something animalistic and ritualistic, comparing it to birds feeding each other, intimate, but more just necessary for survival. The pace of the album's final song, "Time pulls you over backwards", changes like that of a companionship itself. "Time pulls you over backwards, deep beneath your age / Bends you at bloody angle, every time you play," Jamieson sings, overwhelmed by the inevitability of it all.

This isn't to say that I still want to share is a plodding, doom-and-gloom listen. Jamieson's careful to give space to the highs. "I guess I’m lucky that this is all mine / but I still wanna share sometimes," she sings, layered, on the title track, emphasizing our innate need for socialization. "Vista" is a sparkly ode to the lovestruck--"feed me coffee at the drive-in," Jamieson sings, one of the album's most specifically devotional lines--and "Baby" finds similarities between the parental and the amorous via a sense of specificity, the narrator contrasting the closeness of "I can identify your toes" with the admission that "I can't contain you every day." But that's just the thing: Even in the addictive peaks of romantic love, Jamieson knows there are raw, ugly, weird, and uncomfortable layers to reveal. If Bryan Ferry sang, succinctly, "Love is the drug for me," Jamieson reminds us of the gnarly aftereffects.

I still want to share is out today. I asked Jamieson some questions over email about the album, long drives, playing live, and her songwriting process. Read her responses below, edited for clarity.

Since I Left You: I still want to share is an album about, among other things, love and why we choose to keep loving. Is it easiest for you to communicate such thoughts through songs, either to the general public or with others?

Sophie Jamieson: I guess so, in the sense that I’ve learned what my thoughts are through writing the songs. I don’t think I had a way of thinking about this subject before I wrote this album, and recorded it, and spent time choosing how to group the songs. I don’t think I’ve necessarily had something specific I’ve wanted to communicate. The process of creating has been a mode of communicating with myself, and shaping something that I can use as a touchstone and learn from in the long term.

SILY: The arrangements on the album--and sometimes within the same song--alternate between lush and stark. Was it important to you to achieve a contrast in sound from song to song, or within a song?

SJ: It wasn’t, but as we recorded the album, these different characters of songs began to emerge, and we followed them each down their respective paths. I think I imagined the whole album would be a little lighter and driftier than it turned out [to be]. But that is the beauty of working with a producer who really allows you to play and encourages the true spirit of the songs to make themselves heard. [Co-producer] Guy [Massey] helped me find dimensions that I didn’t realize were there. I also think I do gravitate towards peaks, troughs, and drama when it comes to arranging songs. I don’t know why I thought I’d make something drifty. [laughs]

SILY: "Vista" and "Highway" contain lines about being in the car. Is there something about long drives and road trips that remind you of other transient aspects of life?

SJ: I guess so--I hadn’t thought of that! Both those songs describe an imagined journey, and I guess both journeys are inner ones. "Vista" is probably a path to losing yourself, and "Highway" is about trying to escape but finding you’ve driven in a circle all the way back home. I think I used that imagery because there is something lonely about long car journeys where you’re in a liminal space of nowhere in between destinations. I would say it’s less about transience than about the no-man’s land that is always waiting to receive you when you lose your footing and sense of belonging.

SILY: Why did you pick "Camera" and "I don't know what to save" as the singles for the album? Was there something about them exemplary of the record as a whole?

SJ: To be totally honest, I picked them because I felt they had more immediate impact than most of the other songs. Most of this album is quite a slow-burn, we didn’t record with things like radio or playlists in mind, so when it came to picking singles, I had to pick the best of a slow bunch. These two songs explore similar territory to one another, and I actually would have loved to cover more of the album’s layers with the singles released. But these days, you’ve just got to be a bit pragmatic about these things.

SILY: On the record, did you try to establish a consistent or perhaps contrasting relationship between a specific instrument, e.g., swelling strings, and a specific emotion?

SJ: I did not, but now that I think about it, I guess the strings come in a lot of places where there is intense longing. But there is a lot of longing through this album, so I guess we expressed that in several ways. I think perhaps more consciously, we brought in toy-like sounds like omnichord and glockenspiel in places where we wanted to bring a child-like sense of innocence, play, or purity, which we wanted to always feel slightly eerie and at odds with the rest of the arrangement. This sense of wonder and naivete is really important to the album, I think, for some reason.

SILY: What's the inspiration behind the sequencing of the record?

SJ: I initially wanted the record to feel clearly like a cycle of loving, from beginning to end and back again, but it didn’t work out like that. I found myself grouping songs that explored a deep attachment and inability to let go, in the first half, songs of losing yourself. Then “Highway” brings you on the long journey of escape and arriving back at your own front door, where you have to really begin to look at yourself. The second half of the album does this more, I think. It’s a slightly more uncomfortable examination of the contradictions within ourselves and within loving, that can be so painful.

SILY: What's the story behind the cover art?

SJ: I took my dear friend and long-time photographer, Tatjana [Rüegsegger], to Dungeness (her idea) for this shoot. I wanted photos with lots of sky, which was for some reason important, but I didn’t want just nice nature in the background: I wanted an atmosphere of eeriness, odd loneliness, lostness. Dungeness was perfect for this. I think it’s the only certified desert in the UK? I also wanted to be constantly in motion for these pictures. I think it was important to create a sense of ungrounding, constantly in search of landing somewhere that doesn’t exist.

SILY: How are you planning on adapting these songs to a live performance?

SJ: We won’t be trying to re-create the album precisely but are re-arranging and adapting most of these songs for a 5-piece band of drums, bass, 2 guitars, and cello. That’ll mean letting go of some of the finer details and focusing on melody, harmony, emotion, and dynamic. Smaller gigs I’ll play accompanied by solely my dear friend George [Lloyd-Owen] on cello. It’s proving a really joyful, creative process, re-imagining these songs for the stage.

SILY: When performing a song, do you find yourself entering the same headspace you were in when you wrote and/or recorded it?

SJ: I guess I do, and sometimes that is really uncomfortable or even unbearable. I’m very quick to stop playing certain songs live, I think it might make me quite an infuriating person to go and see play. For me, it’s important that I can enter into a song fully on stage, and gig to gig, that means choosing the setlist very carefully. If I’m on tour, the set has to be very different from night to night because I feel so different every day. Having said that, it’s never the same song as it was when you wrote it. The meaning will always change for you over time, and I do find that some songs come around full circle and take on a new lease of life after a time, like old friends come to support you after a long period away. That’s a very special thing.

SILY: What's next for you?

SJ: Next right now? I’m preparing the band for touring in the new year, doing a lot of release-related admin, writing LP3, and trying to find a paying day job. I find I’m constantly trying to find a way to balance all of these things, and thinking I’ve almost cracked it, but I never do. [laughs]

SILY: Are you the type of songwriter who is always writing, or do you need to set aside time to write?

SJ: Until about 1.5 years ago, I was always writing. Something changed last year: I burnt out, my worldview fell to pieces, and I found it wasn’t coming anymore. I just didn’t want to dig into myself. It was too jarring, painful, and exhausting. So I’ve had to change the way I write. Over the past 6 months, I’ve been setting time aside and doing it no matter how much I don’t want to. It’s been very interesting. It’s the first time I’ve really applied discipline to my writing, which I’ve been nervous to do all my life. I’ve gone from losing a lot of confidence in my writing to realizing it doesn’t always have to be such a mysterious and unpredictable thing, that if you put the time in regardless, it’s likely that something good will come.

SILY: Is there anything you've been listening to, reading, or watching that's inspired you or caught your attention?

SJ: I’m currently slightly obsessed with depictions of night in art of all kinds, also space (outer), silence, and stillness. These things will be woven through LP3. I read a book a couple of months ago which absolutely captivated me: When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice by Terry Tempest Williams. It’s in some ways a meditation on silence, on what women don’t say, and what that means, what silence really is and why it’s so uncomfortable for us humans. Is it a gift or a violence? I read a few pages of this book and immediately went and wrote a song rooted in it. It’s a poetic, wild, transcendent read.

Tour dates

1/21: A Slice of Vinyl, Gosport, UK

1/22: Truck Store, Oxford, UK

1/23: Jumbo Records, Leeds, UK

1/25: Bella Union Vinyl Shop, Brighton, UK

2/7: Low Four, Manchester, UK

2/8: The Duncairn, Belfast, UK

2/11: The Folklore Rooms, Brighton, UK

2/12: The Lexington, London, UK

2/16: Peggy's Skylight, Nottingham, UK

2/20: HydeAway, Frome, UK

5/16: Braziers Park, Wallingford, UK

[innervoiceartblog]

“Once upon a time, when women were birds, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy. The birds still remember what we have forgotten, that the world is meant to be celebrated.”

― Terry Tempest Williams from: 'When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice'

[maslimanny]

Once upon a time, when women were birds, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy. The birds still remember what we have forgotten, that the world is meant to be celebrated.!!

[heresay]

We can change, evolve, and transform our own conditioning. We can choose to move like water rather than be molded like clay.

Terry Tempest Williams, When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice

[dk-thrive]

Once upon a time, when women were birds, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy.

— Terry Tempest Williams, When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice (Sarah Crichton Books, April 10, 2012)

[sneakers-and-shakes]

Women's Month Reads

In honor of Women’s History Month, I thought I’d share some books I’ve read recently written by women about women and, mostly, for women.

When Women Were Birds: Fifty Four Variations on Voice by Terry Tempest Williams

A mix of prose and poetry Terry intertwines her life, conservation efforts, and her mother’s death into a story that reads like a well written journal entry. She combines what it means to be a woman, the earth we all live on and our connection with it and each other, interweaving the concepts much like the graceful flight of a bird.

A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf

A classic from 1929 when women were allowed even less than we are today and yet the concepts still hold true. Woolf talks about fiction and writing and how it relates to women in what feels like a long string of consciousness thought making this already short read go by even faster. There’s almost certainly an analysis on the past and the relationship fiction and poetry had with women, the past, as always, still influencing our present.

Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger by Soraya Chemaly

If there is ever a book that factually notates the woman condition, it is this one. She brings to light many of the harsh realities of being a woman that most of us simply carry around in our subconscious and lays it out for the world to see and understand. There is a safe space in here to feel the anger we so rightfully deserve to feel and brings us closer together.

Bonus:

Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado-Perez

This is sitting on my shelf as my next read but I have heard many great things about this book as well. I wanted to include it since I will be reading it soon.

Real Self Care:  A Transformative Program for Redefining Wellness by Pooja Lakshmin, MD

A fantastic book detailing the woman condition as it relates to self-care and mental health. Dr. Pooja Lakshmin presents ways to redefine what self-care is in a world where the goal is often more to make money than deal with the real matters of mental health, and lays out steps to achieve it.

 -.-

These are just a few of the books that I found were fitting for this month and I am sure there are countless others that I would love to hear about from you guys! Thanks for reading!

[champ-wiggle]

Once upon a time, when women were birds, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy. The birds still remember what we have forgotten, that the world is meant to be celebrated.

Terry Tempest Williams, When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice

[belamuse]

Why I write (and share words)

and facilitate life story and mythopoetic writing processes (where women share words) for others:

“When one woman doesn't speak, other women get hurt.”

― Terry Tempest Williams, When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice

Image: Alexandra Schoen

[julesofnature]

Once upon a time, when women were birds, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy. The birds still remember what we have forgotten, that the world is meant to be celebrated.

Terry Tempest Williams, When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice 

[exhaled-spirals]

How shall I live? I want to feel both the beauty and the pain of the age we are living in. I want to survive my life without becoming numb. I want to speak and comprehend words of wounding without having these words become the landscape where I dwell. I want to possess a light touch that can elevate darkness to the realm of stars. [...] We cannot do it alone. We do it alone.

Terry Tempest Williams, When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice

[vmaddesso]

Excavating... remnants of joy in the debris of nightmares.

Yes, sometimes, waking up and mornings can be excruciating.

Finding the joy takes work.

It is possible.

“Once upon a time, when women were birds, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy. The birds still remember what we have forgotten, that the world is meant to be celebrated.” ~Terry Tempest Williams, When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice

[magicinwords]

If ever there was a story without a shadow, it would be this: that we as women exist in direct sunlight only.

Terry Tempest Williams, from When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variation on Voice

[innervoiceartblog]

“Once upon a time, when women were birds, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy. The birds still remember what we have forgotten, that the world is meant to be celebrated.”

― Terry Tempest Williams from: ‘When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice’

[maslimanny]

Take a deep breath and sidestep my fear and begin speaking from the place where beauty and bravery meet--within the chambers of a quivering heart.!!

- Terry Tempest Williams,

[heresay]

It is the dirt of our lives—the depressions, the losses, the inequities, the failing grades in trigonometry, the e-mails sent in fear or hate or haste, the ways in which we encounter people different from us—that shape us, polish us to a heady sheen, make us in fact more beautiful, more elemental, more artful and lasting.

Terry Tempest Williams, When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice

[dk-thrive]

the world is meant to be celebrated

Once upon a time, when women were birds, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy. The birds still remember what we have forgotten, that the world is meant to be celebrated.

~Terry Tempest Williams, When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice (Sarah Crichton Books; April 10, 2012)