Long admired for her crystalline voice and unflinching lyrical gaze, Clarke has always had an ability to evoke a communal melancholy. But with this LP, recorded at a remote Scottish cabin, she’s achieved the feat of stripping away the barriers between artist and listener. What emerges is a record of remarkable intimacy and integrity as Clarke embraces stillness and vulnerability. She sought total isolation but ended up creating something even more profoundly connective.
Clarke has always been unafraid to ask questions with no clear answers, and here she gives herself no hiding place. In that sense, this is her most complete artistic statement yet as she spins rawness into elegance. While she admits it may not join the pantheon of classic isolation records — “I’m not in control of the historic time and wider context in which I’m creating and it’s not for me to be diverted by whether my output has any place in popularity,” she says — it still sits firmly in the lineage of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago, and the lo-fi solo work of Adrianne Lenker.