Album Review: Sophie Jamieson, I Still Want To Share

Sophie Jamieson returns with her sophomore album, I Still Want To Share, which serves more as a sonic suite than separate tracks. The London-based songwriter meticulously explores the cyclical nature of love followed by heartbreak, and the perpetual human desire to repeat the merry go round, driven by the absolute necessity of finding ourselves in other people.

Vivid vignettes abound. There's the drifting, two-day road trip conveyed on ‘Highway’ – “I wanted to see the moment the sun beat the electricity” – with all worldly belongings in the backseat. Elsewhere, the narrator is sipping coffee at a drive-in on ‘Vista’, and sleeping while someone else speeds across the landscape, before sinking whiskey at sleepy motels. Co-produced by Sophie with the Grammy-winning Guy Massey, these are songs that possess a fine sense of movement.

The rawness that her debut possessed is welded here to a Suzuki Omnichord, a wheezing pump organ, and festooned with strings courtesy of Josephine Stephenson, who has worked with, among others, Lisa Hannigan. All of which makes Jamieson’s soaring vocals all the more powerful on ‘How Do You Want To Be Loved’, or on the bleakly wonderful ‘Your Love Is A Mirror’, which is a pitch perfect blend of folk and indie.

7/10

Out now