BRYDE returns with her new album ‘The Volume of Things’, released on Easy Life Records on 29th May. The title refers to the bombardment of modern life. Each day we’re overloaded with new information, and distracted by notifications pinging on phone screens. Everywhere we turn, there are millions of choices to be made: what to do, what to buy, what to believe. Despite being hyper-connected through the tiny portals in our pockets, finding raw, uninterrupted connection remains just as difficult, if not more so.
Lead single ‘The Trouble Is’ explores the grip of the midnight worries that keep us awake long after dark. “Looking for some way to get it right,” Bryde sings, “the things you think to yourself at night”. Despite the pang of regret that surges through the core of this song, there’s also something strangely comforting about everybody experiencing similar anxieties, no matter how lonely it feels. ”What we have in common can often be what keeps us apart,” Bryde says. “I’m a terrible insomniac and I have various coping methods, mostly involving trying to calm my overactive brain. I hope people can really resonate with that line.”
Bryde – or Sarah Howells, to her friends – grew up in the sleepy Welsh seaside town of Milford Haven. Now based in Hackney, she released her debut solo album ‘Like An Island’ in 2018 – written amid a break-up, it was a record about emancipation and learning to exist alone again. She toured the album – which was nominated for the Welsh Music Prize – playing alongside the likes of Fatherson, Rufus Wainwright, The Joy Formidable, and she performed at Dot to Dot, Green Man, Live At Leeds, The Great Escape, Latitude, Boardmasters, and 2000 Trees.
In the year after ‘Like An Island’s release, “I learnt a lot more about myself,” Bryde explains. “I had my first real experience of emotional burnout and quite a paradigm shift experience in terms of how I treat myself.” All of these paths led her to ‘The Volume of Things’. Written and recorded between London, and various friends’ studios in Berlin, the album is produced by Thomas Mitchener (Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes, The Futureheads and BlackWaters). Bryde describes the record’s expansive feel as being like, “the calm before the storm – before the true calm that I’m working towards.”
“Quantity is not necessarily an advantage,” says Bryde, who also studies counselling part-time and has long been interested in psychology. She is, she says, fascinated by choice. “Every time you choose something, you have to leave so many other things behind. ‘The Volume of Things’ is about getting free of some of that worry and neurosis.”
These are the challenges that Bryde’s second record grapples with. Ultimately, ‘The Volume of Things’ journeys towards a quieter way of living and tries to sift meaning from the white noise.
‘Outsiders’ taps into a sense of the collective. Bryde began by writing about feeling alone and infatuated in an anonymous crowd, but revisiting the lyrics later on, the track began to take on a second meaning. “I often feel like an outsider and to be honest, who doesn’t feel that way sometimes?” she asks. “Aren’t we all always hoping to find common ground with others. The song on one level is about me and the person I was infatuated with trying to find something amidst a messy emotional situation, and that feeling of the earth moving beneath your feet.”
“Then I got this sense that it was also about bigger topics, like Brexit and the wider right-wing movement. Often people seem to want to be surrounded by carbon copies of themselves in order to validate their existence. For me,” adds Bryde, “there is ultimately no solace or glory to be found in separation and division. When we look for superficial similarities and try to bond that way, we miss the deeper things that connect us.”
The propulsive ‘Flies’ touches on the inner noise of insecurity; “body image and self-judgement” are key themes. Of all the tracks, ‘80 Degrees’ harks back most strongly to the isolation of the lyrics on her debut. “Your fancy gifts were the first to go, now the charity shops “round here know me by name,” quips the first verse, disposing of reminders from the past. “It’s aimed at a partner I left behind,” she explains, “but since leaving that relationship and even since writing that song, there’s an old unwanted part of myself or my thinking that I’ve left behind too.”
‘The Volume of Things’ tackles a universal struggle but its resounding message is one of hope. “I have big goals for this album,” Bryde concludes. “I’d like it to scoop people up in a wave of new positive emotions, and to be celebrated for its melodies and accessibility. Ultimately, I’d like it to draw us all a little closer together.”
TRACK LISTING
1. Silence
2. The Trouble Is
3. Done
4. 80 Degrees
5. Flies
6. Paper Cups
7. Hallelujahs
8. Another Word For Free
9. Handing It Over
10. Outsiders
11. The Volume of Things
LIVE DATES
17th Sept Bodega, Nottingham
18th Sept Think Tank, Newcastle
19th Sept Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh
22nd Sept Hyde Park Book Club, Leeds
23rd Sept Deaf Institute, Manchester
24th Sept Oslo, London
25th SeptThe Castle & Falcon, Birmingham
26th Sept Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff