With the paint hardly dry on her latest album, A Small Unknowable Thing, Josienne Clarke has announced a new EP, “I Promised You Light” (out February 4th), that finds her trying a new direction. In Folk Radio’s review of her last album, Danny Neill concludes, “This will stand the test of time because it is an album that the artist had to make. These songs are so direct, showing an immediacy born of frustration and inspiration. Unshackled creative freedom screams out of every song, which just so happens to be ripe with raw artistic expression combined with music of surefire melodic and dramatic purpose. Where she goes from here should be fascinating.”
It seems that the inspiration to create something more joyous came from a fan who approached her at her merch table. “There was this one woman who came up to me at the merch table in tears. She was a fan pleading with me to write something in the style of how I write, but more positive,” Clarke recalls, saying that while the fan had been visibly touched by her emotive, melancholic songs, she was craving something more joyous. The fan told Clarke she was going through her own difficult time. “She wanted something with hope, something with a bit of light in it”.
Her new EP, I Promised You Light, was born of that moment. “It stayed with me,” Clarke says of her message. “It made me really think: do I need to try and frame things more positively? Maybe I haven’t been able to in the past because I’m still working through things – my work is very autobiographical and cathartic – but I’m only now just finding more positive threads through new experiences and what I’ve learned over this last year.”
Today, Josienne has shared a video for the lead single, ‘Driving At Night’, made by Alec Bowman_Clarke & The Odoom Brothers. “It’s essentially a song about escaping,” Clarke says, explaining it was about driving away from the last ever gig she performed as part of a duo at the interval. “I literally drove for hours across Europe. I wanted as much physical space between me and my previous career as possible at that point. The feeling of release of having finished that final gig was huge, as was the exciting air of possibility that came about having left behind a thing that was so difficult for me for a long time. It was like a literal lift: I felt everything would suddenly be easier now.” The song’s message, she says, is simple: “it’s – just leave,” she laughs. “It’s alright to leave because all this other great stuff awaits you if you just walk away.”
It sounds like she kept her promise.
New EP I Promised You Light is due out February 4th – Pre-Order it here: ffm.to/ipromisedyoulight