Album Review: Sophie Jamieson - Choosing

I saw the phrase “fraught relationship with alcohol,” and that is why I listened.

How do you discover new music?

This is a question—rhetorical, or otherwise, that I am certain I have posed in the past, or, at the very least, I have used as a means of setting up how I was introduced to an artist, or how I select the albums I, eventually, opt to write pieces about.

There are so many performers, so much music released, and so many different places to discover it all that it can be, and often is, overwhelming. There are the usual channels one may frequent to learn about an artist—music news sites like Pitchfork, Stereogum, et al.—places that overlap in some areas of coverage but vary enough to warrant checking them all somewhat regularly, regardless of the very obvious shortcomings they all wear on their respective sleeves. 

There is the promotion, or hype, from social media—somebody you admire and respect mentioning an artist or even just a song on Instagram or in a tweet; or a band, or singer you follow doing something similar—the act alone being enough to make you curious to listen to at least one song, or read a little more about the artist in question. 

And there are, of course, only so many hours in the day and only so many of those hours that I can dedicate to reading about, or sampling new music, so I am unable to follow through and listen to everything I come across but I, perhaps unfortunately since I might put me at risk of being a “bad fan,” hear about a number of artists or albums through a place I am more than likely not supposed to be—the suspicious, shadowy back alley of the internet where albums, often available prior to their release dates, are shared through either message boards, or through blog-adjacent posts on a sprawling, and seemingly lawless website. 

I saw the phrase “fraught relationship with alcohol,” and that is why I listened.

There is something both subtle and alluring about the cover art of Choosing, the debut full-length from the London-based singer and songwriter Sophie Jamieson. A little less than half of the cover is white—the album’s title, centered, all in capital letters, with her name placed a little further below it, in a much smaller typeface, all lowercase.

The other half—just a little more than half—of the cover is a photo of Jamieson’s face. 

You can see the strands of her dark hair, her right eye, part of her nose, and a portion of her mouth, but that is it. The rest of her face is obscured by the white posts, or bars, of a fence or a gate, that she is standing behind. The photograph—tinted into cooler tones, does quite literally give off a chilling feeling—it is intriguing, and just slightly unnerving. 

There is something that is not “mysterious” about the photo, or about Jamieson in how she is posed, but something unspoken is happening, and you can begin to pick up on the longer you gaze at the cover. 

I came across the stark cover image of Choosing in one of those shadowy back alleys of the internet—a lawless, sprawling website that tagged the album, a few days before its release in early December, as “indie-folk” and “singer-songwriter.” Those genres, or descriptors, along with the cover art, were enough to get me to stop and read the description of the album—less a “description” and more of an unattributed, copied, and pasted early review of the album by Zara Hedderman for the website Loud and Quiet—and it was in that review where I saw the phrase, “fraught relationship with alcohol.” 

And that is, at least in part, why I listened.

*

And it is safe to say, or at least make the presumption, that both Choosing, as well as Jamieson’s career as a singer and songwriter, have occupied the space between a “labor of love” and simply just laborious, or challenging for her—seemingly to the point where it was something she may not want to continue pursuing. 

Choosing is her debut full-length, but Jamieson began releasing music nearly a decade ago—her first EP, the beautiful Where, is long out of print but still available through digital services. It’s lush in its arrangements, and while it is easy to have spent any amount of time with Choosing, and then in returning to her earliest material, believe to hear identifiable glimmers of the present in her past, but the thing that is most noteworthy about Where is while there is a lush and gorgeous nature to it—at times a little haunting, sure, but it is exponentially less bleak overall when compared.

In sharp, and welcomed contrast, there is a visceral sense of darkness, bordering on dread or unease, that courses and surges throughout Choosing—it’s hard to articulate it exactly, but it is something that I felt the first time I listened shortly before its official release—absolutely entranced by what I was hearing.

And this is something I still can feel now when the record spins on my turntable, weeks later.

Jamieson’s voice has also changed quite a bit over the last decade—time, and age, will do that, certainly, but the way she uses that time and age, and experience—playing it as an instrument almost, and allows it to amplify the tone of her lyricism, and adds to the underlying sense of unease that is ever present throughout Choosing.

There was a youthfulness, and a little bit of a lighter sound in her vocals on Where, but that is gone now—replaced with a voice that is certainly more confident in itself, but also coming from a starker, and perhaps wearier, place. 

Between the release of Where, and when Jamieson returned in 2020, self-releasing two EPSs six months apart, I am uncertain what she was doing—if she temporarily walked away from performing, as many people often do for myriad reasons, or if she was toiling away on the songs that would eventually find their way onto Hammer and Release, respectively, before holing up in a studio during lockdown in early 2021, and beginning to work on the material for Choosing.

Jamieson has, in preparation for what is commonly called the “album cycle,” been active on Instagram as a means of both promoting the album now that it is out in the world, but also showing her gratitude for those who have listened so far, and those who believed in her during the process. 

“I recorded this album having no idea if anyone would sign me or if anyone would ever really hear it,” she explained, adding that the recording sessions were paid for through “scrapped together” funds earned through bartending, “deliveroo-riding,” and bottling “industrial amounts” of home-delivered cocktails. “I cycled to the studio and delivered food on my way home,” Jamieson continued. “I ate a lot of baked beans and spent a lot of time in the Tesco reduced section. I let go of my management and begged a lot of people to manage me. Then I gave up, and I begged a lot of labels to listen to this record. I chased a lot of labels, heard back from very few, and felt my self-worth melting all over the floor.”

Choosing, eventually, would go on to find a home via Bella Union, the UK home to acts like Beach House and Father John Misty—but as Jamieson continued to explain in her post about the history behind the record, the recording sessions were mastered three different times before she ultimately decided to scrap a more “polished” version of the album in favor of using the unmastered recordings—something that you can hear as Choosing slowly reveals itself to you with each listen. 

There is a raw, live, and “in the room” kind of feeling to it—an urgency and immediacy crawling out of the songs, and as Jamieson herself was begging labels to take a chance on her, and the record,, the record itself is, in turn, begging (and then demanding) to be heard. 

*

I saw the phrase “fraught relationship with alcohol,” and that is why I listened.

And there, of course, are albums that can, and often are, used as a means of working through something like an artist’s fraught relationship with anything—a person, an experience from their past, or a substance. And in that “working through,” there is the implication that, as the album concludes, there will be a resolution of some kind—e.g., Amy Hoffman’s difficult journey toward sobriety that tracks throughout the songs they contributed to the most recent effort from the Boston-based outfit Future Teens, Self Help. 

However, something compelling about Choosing—both in how many of the individual songs are arranged, as well as the album taken as a whole piece of art, is that there is little, if any, resolve as it concludes. Jamieson admittedly still has this fraught relationship with alcohol; in a different set of photos on Instagram shared around the time of the album’s release, including images of her performing at an in-store event at the storied Rough Trade, there is a close-up of her signing the back of an LP for a fan: “I’m sorry you asked me to sign this when I’m drunk.”

And I have, perhaps more in recent months than at other points in my life, have given a lot of thought to the idea of the “cry for help,” the admission that you need help and the ask for it, and then the space that forms in between those two extremes. And the more time I spend with Choosing, and the more I am able to discern about Jamieson herself as a person, and as an artist, what I am coming to understand is that this album is not an ask, nor is it a cry, but rather, it is a larynx shredding, visceral, and otherworldly scream into the seemingly never-ending abyss that surrounds us all—and in that scream, the wait for a response that may never arrive. 

*

The longer I have been writing about music, the more I have become remiss to do this, because I feel like it is a little lazy, or uninspired, or sells the subject of the writing short, but for even as long as I have been writing about music, I sometimes am simply unable to avoid naming other artists—not as a means of comparison, but as a point of reference.

Perhaps it is how Choosing opens—Jamieson’s voice, low, with the warmth and ringing out of an electric guitar strum underneath it, or perhaps it is the ferocity with which other songs the album eventually rise to, but I could, and it is in part what drew me further into the album upon my initial listen, hear faint echoes of the Australian singer and songwriter Angie McMahon, and her arresting debut, Salt; elsewhere, as the dramatic tensions of the album become higher, Choosing becomes either more explosive and unpredictable, or can surprisingly turn itself inward—a dynamism and artistic fearlessness reminiscent of Johanna Warren’s two most recent efforts, Chaotic Good and Lessons for Mutants. 

And midway through the album’s first side, on “Sink,” Jamieson channels a playfulness and sense of whimsy that recalled When The Pawn-era Fiona Apple—specifically in how the song is arranged, yes, but the feeling overall was one of attempting to balance something that is on the cusp of becoming absolutely feral or unhinged, while holding it back with an effortless smirk on the verge of turning into a snarl.

But even with these points of reference, Choosing is, from start to finish, a wholly unique listen in how it sounds and feels, but also in how it unflinchingly and often beautifully depicts the dark corners of Jamieson’s lived experiences.

*

Musically, Choosing rarely, if ever, truly falters in its arrangements and instrumentation, but the album works the best, or is perhaps the most impactful when Jamieson has structured a song around the strums of an electric guitar, with the eventual accompaniment by additional layers or elements—sometimes subtle, other times raucous. 

Jamieson spends a portion of the album’s first half working in a place of eerie, spectral musical tension—the second track, “Crystal,” is among those that is based around the creaks of an upright piano, and the cavernous reverberation of the chords made on the keys, reminiscent slightly of the creeping sense of tension on 2021’s sparse and pensive Engine of Hell from Emma Ruth Rundle. “Crystal” follows a formula that Jamieson uses throughout the album—beginning the song from someplace quiet, often barely rising above the volume of a whisper, and allowing it to grow to the point of disorientation and occasional cacophony. Here, the inclusion of additional layers like a synthesizer and other atmospheric elements creates a kind of swirling and spiraling feeling underneath Jamieson’s vocals. She never loses control of it while she’s conjuring its strength and intensity—allowing it to naturally rise until it reaches a peak (albeit a restrained one), and the song quickly resolves into dissonance. 

“Downpour,” the song that follows, is similar in the path it takes—opening with mournful piano chords, then after the first minute, Jamieson is joined by the strums of an electric guitar, muffled and clattering percussive elements, and an undercurrent of ambiance, all working toward a stunning, swooning moment of catharsis as it concludes.

Of Choosing’s 11 tracks, only a few of them near the top of the first side are less guitar oriented—“Sink” is the last of the small collection that begins with, or is ultimately constructed around a piano, and it is one of the more infectiously written, slinking along light-heartedly, with a bounce to it that isn’t found anywhere else in the material included on the album.

That is not to indicate that a majority of Choosing is inaccessible or self-indulgent in how it is structure—no, far from it; the sparser moments held together by the strums of a guitar are listenable, certainly, but the harrowing tone of the album overall, especially in these quieter moments can initially keep you at arm’s length—the longer you sit with Choosing, and more than patience, the more understanding you have for it, the more it opens itself up to you with subsequent listens.

And there are things that I am constantly drawn to, time and again, in both contemporary popular music, and often in literature—things that, without a doubt, I will find compelling, and grab ahold of my attention, rarely letting go. In a book, it’s the use of an off-stage second person—a “you” that the story, or narrative is directed at, and it’s especially compelling if that is introduced through a perfect, unshakable opening line, like “He nearly called you last night,” from the first page of Elliot Perlman’s sprawling novel Seven Types of Ambiguity.

In music, there is something haunting and gorgeous about the sound of a delicately, often carelessly, strummed electric guitar, accompanied by nothing else, then the eventual arrival of a female voice—this is what made “Play The Game” such a breathtaking opening track on Angie McMahon’s blistering and smoldering debut, Salt, in 2019, and it is why “Addition,” the first song featured on Choosing equally as smoldering and breathtaking in how you are compelled to hang within the small silences that occur as it unfolds. 

Jamieson, as the album progresses toward its second half, varies her guitar tone, as well as if the strings are delicately and intricately plucked, like on the dizzying “Empties,” which closes out Choosing’s first side, or if they are pensively and deliberately strummed, like on otherworldly, unsettling, “Fill,” where the sound quivers through the use of a tremolo pedal, or on “Runner,” which opens the second side, and was one of the singles released from the record in advance of its arrival in full.

And while a majority of the album begins in this similar fashion, Jamieson never runs the risk of things beginning to sound “the same,” simply because of the direction the songs take once they get underway—the smolder and slow burn that builds itself up until the song is engulfed in flames. In songs like “Runner,” and “Empties,” she does it through the very gradual introduction of additional instruments—all of them tumbling together and then working them into a literal frenzy as the songs respectively careen toward their conclusions; in a song like “Fill,” she does it without assistance, allowing the howling of her voice to pull the song into the place where it knocks the wind out of you the further along it gets.

*

Choosing opens with a question.

“What did I do last night,” Jamieson asks—though, as the narrative to the gorgeous and brooding “Addition” begins, it is unclear if she is asking this in response to somebody, off-stage, asking it of her, or if she is asking it of herself as a means of retracing her steps.

In her lyricism, Jamieson is intentional and often poetic in how she uses ambiguity in her storytelling—creating just enough of a portrait to give you an idea, but never revealing the whole picture, or being direct in revealing, perhaps, too much of herself. The songs on Choosing, regardless of how shadowy or vague they might be, are intensely personal, and the longer you sit with them, just how personal and often how bleak they are becomes much more apparent.

Prior to the release of Choosing, Jamieson was equally as vague in how she explains some of the meanings behind the songs in a short piece on Still Listening. Many of them are about failed romances, like “Crystal,” “Who Will I Be,” and “Downpour,” but with a song like “Addition,” she plays its meaning, or intention, just a little closer to the chest: “This song is like a desperate search for an answer, a key, a little bit of hope,” she explains. “I was bursting with something I didn’t understand, and it fizzled over in public and humiliating ways,” adding that the song is the opportunity to “examine the wreckage,” and to try and “find something worth keeping and building upon.”

Jamieson herself describes “Sink” as sounding playful, but at its heart, it is addressed to her dependence on and difficult relationship with alcohol—“It’s a painting of how I felt about booze and how I thought it felt about me. I wrote it when I realized it did not love me back, that it was not a friend that I could talk to, that it would sink me if I didn’t make a choice, quickly.”

Choosing opens with a question.

“What did I do last night,” Jamieson asks. “I lost my bike and broke a hole in my memory,” she responds to her own question. “I think I left a part of me behind. I was kind, and then became a kind of enemy.”

The self-effacing and darkness that runs throughout Jamieson’s writing on Choosing should not be surprising, but regardless, it can be startling to hear—startling, yes, but it is what makes it such a fascinating experience of an album as you are brought into the world she has created. 

Contemporary popular music is often based on repetition—a melody that you are able to place your words into, and a chorus that is revisited two or three times in the song’s duration. Choosing relies heavily on repetition—of ideas or specific phrases—not as means of crafting something catchy to sing along with, but in an effort to convey a kind of beautiful desperation and exasperation, with the result being hypnotic and alluring to hear while bordering on manic in its intensity. 

“I’m more than the sum of the booze in my blood,” Jamieson attests continually on “Addition.” Then, on “Downpour,” the repeated and woozy depiction of a tumultuous love coming to an end—“You soak me to the skin and dry me out,” and as the first side concludes, with the dizzying “Empties,” Jamieson sings, a little lower in intensity but by no means less serious, and more of a demand, than a plea, “You’d better not leave me standing in my empties.”

Her writing walks a line between this want for more, the want to be loved, and harrowing deprecation and unflattering reflections—the opening lines of “Crystal” are especially critical of both herself, and an unnamed individual: “I like you best when you’re blurry, and your speech is slurry,” Jamieson sings, her voice rising and falling against the backdrop of dramatic, cavernous piano chords. “And you can love me in the crowd when all new words are fully drowned.”

The long, difficult glances inward reach their peak while Jamieson perhaps reaches close to a personal bottom near the end of the album’s first side on “Fill”—“I am starving, and my behavior is becoming alarming,” she howls from a place of unspeakable sorrow within. “I tried hardening up. I tried to be tougher with my love. I tried to need nothing, but I starve.”

*

I saw the phrase “fraught relationship with alcohol,” and that is why I listened.

And the longer I thought about that phrase—specifically in relation to Choosing, the more I thought about the intersection of pain, or a personal darkness, and art, and then us, as listeners, or bystanders.

I think about the music I am most drawn to—full of sadness, or often described casually as “depressing” to listen to. And I think about why I am most drawn to it.

The sadness I am full of. The depression one could casually describe me through.

I think about the depths that an artist can depict in their work, and how we run the risk of being pulled down into those depths with them.

Though we, perhaps, were already there. 

In our role as a listener, or bystander, in taking in an album like Choosing—with what it ultimately is about and in the state it was conceived in, what are our duties? Or, what do we owe Jamieson in response to her unabashed honesty?

Choosing is a confessional, yes, but even at its most personal and vulnerable, it never is at the risk of becoming too confessional—the kind of thoughts, or feelings, that should be saved for a journal, unpacked with your therapist, or just buried deep down inside and never exhumed. It is often startling in just how personal and vulnerable it can be, but therein lies why it is so compelling, and why, in return for its confessions, we owe it our consideration and our ears.

For as bleak and unnerving as the album can be, the most surprising thing about Choosing is the note of hope that it ends on, and the kind of self-awareness that Jamieson manages to cling to throughout. 

In her brief analysis of each song for Still Listening, Jamieson says she wrote “Empties,” the first side’s closing track, at a time when she thought her self-destructive times were over. “I was in what I thought was a healthy, happy relationship,” she explains. “In retrospect, I find this song very revealing. I still had not learned how to hold my own, alone.” 

Something that I noticed throughout Choosing is that—and I hesitate to say the songs end “abruptly,” but many of them reach a point where they are running as fast as they can, head-first toward something, and then they reach that thing, and conclude with little if any resolution for us as listeners. The moment is simply over.

But the real resolve, and the promise for something more, regardless of how difficult the past has been, comes in the album’s final fleeting moments on its closing track, “Long Play,” where Jamieson quietly assures herself, “We know you’re no clown—you're a woman, and you’re only on side A. You’ve still got the whole long play to twist.”

The attraction, or interest, in something that is inherently sad, or dark, or easily described in passing as being “depressing,” is one thing, but it is what we do with that thing as active listeners that is exponentially more important—for both the artist who has created it, and for ourselves, and the opportunity for a greater, or larger, understanding it provides. Sophie Jamieson, with Choosing, and her return to performing, has created something that resonates and linger—a melody, or chord progression can remain in your head, yes, but it is the depth and honesty of her lyrics that make it such a thought-provoking experience. 

Choosing is out now on CD, LP, and as a digital download, via Bella Union.