We’ve covered the work of Asheville-based songwriter Sophia Corinne several times in recent months, primarily as part of the indie folk outfit Wild Array The band’s compassionate and emotive style was made apparent by ‘Hominy Creek‘, a song which captured “the aching sadness of missing someone, the silence of distance and space.” But in a turn characteristic of Corinne’s nuance, the song rejected sorrow in favour of a sound bright and rhythmic. “Something which captures the fondness of memories,” we wrote, “the melancholic joy of that which is no longer present.”
Sophia Corinne also works as a solo artist, and recently released an EP, The Rim. Pushing further into an evocative and confessional sound, the release highlights the bittersweet depth of Corinne’s work. Each track is a window into a specific moment, instances of intense emotion both good and bad from across the human experience. The points which coalesce into a life.
Writing in a preview, we described ‘Canadian Goose’ as once such example. A track where “the anxieties of new beginnings and loss of old connections are tempered by a persistent sense of hope.” The ability to hold such contradictory feelings is typical of a record that makes room for the full spectrum of emotion. As we continued:
The result is a kind of pact. A promise to sit with emotions and implications of every situation with generosity intact. “I can recall the big and the small gestures of kindness,” goes a verse halfway through the track. “The people who shared all they could they all cared for me even in my blindness / I guess that’s a gift that can’t be revoked by the arrows of new destinations / I’m sure I’ll return it in time wind my way back like birds fly with navigation.”
We were lucky enough to speak to Sophia about the record, and delve a little deeper into the themes and inspirations behind it.
Thanks so much for taking the time Sophia, and congratulations on The Rim. How does it feel to have a new release ready for the world?
Precious! It’s such a precious opportunity to be able to make something and give it to the world.
I’m always fascinated when acts deviate from playing in bands to working solo. Could you speak a little about the difference between these songs and those of Wild Array? What is it about a certain track that tells you it’s for one project or the other?
My ultimate goal for the project Wild Array is to be able to just sing and dance around and never touch a guitar with that band. There is something about the music we make together that I feel like I don’t want anything standing between me and them and whoever is listening. There is a wildness and a freedom with that collaboration. With this solo project, the songs I play are ones that I have a pretty clear vision for and feel very particular about how I want them to be played. It’s much easier to manifest that vision when I can really take ownership of the project and it’s not a collective of many voices with many different ideas and opinions. I can’t really say for sure what makes a song belong to Wild Array or Sophia Corinne. It’s a feel thing I guess.
Could we talk about the title of the EP. The Rim. Why did you decide to go with that? What does it mean to you?
There’s something very intriguing and appealing to me about being at the edge of something, the rim is that edge. I feel like the rim is a place where everything gets really honest and brought into focus. There is an element of delicacy and danger, of vulnerability and bravery. These songs all have those qualities to me. They are about times in my life where I’ve been pushed to the edge of something, it felt like the common thread these songs shared.
There’s a range of emotions across the EP, from sadness and trepidation to sensual tenderness, and there’s a sense that each is a highly personal memory or experience. Life presented as a patchwork of moments. How autobiographical did the songs end up being?
Yeah, these songs are definitely personal. For example, Fraud is about this one time I got scammed out of about ⅓ of my savings. I don’t know if I would go as far as to say they are autobiographical though. I have a big imagination and definitely embellish.
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One of the defining features of the release is the interplay between competing forces, something set out in opener ‘Canadian Goose’. A relationship between warmth and discomfort, or fear and joy, as though one end of the spectrum can’t exist without the other. Are such ambiguities merely a consequence of your writing style, or something you consciously search out?
I think both, I’ve found that if you examine any emotion or experience closely enough you come to know that there isn’t anything inherently true about it because it is subject to change. Everything changes! It’s a great blessing and a great source of suffering too.
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the value of music and art more generally, what it means to both the creator and audience to take part in such an exchange. I was struck by the quote in the press release on how these songs are intended for those who “turn to music for healing, meaning, and support,” and wondered if you could expand on that a little? Do you turn to music for such processes? Does writing songs perform a different role to playing them, or indeed listening to other people’s work?
I definitely turn to music for those things. My mom learned very early on that if I was having a hard time or in a mood that music almost always helped to take the edge off. I’m working part time as a child caregiver and I’ve found that often when a baby is upset that music can be a very powerful source of soothing and comfort. And really, we’re all just big babies.
In my experience, creativity is by its nature transformative. You can take that principle even further though. If you examine our world and our experience of the world I’ve found that mostly it’s just a whole bunch of stories we’ve created and those stories have meaning. How we participate in and shape that meaning that we create together is where it gets really interesting. Music can be used as an agent of transformation, it can build worlds. Whether you are writing or playing songs yourself or just listening there is so much potential for healing and transformation through music. I’m not the first to express this though, some folks who have helped inspire my understanding of and relationship to music in this way are artists like Esperanza Spalding, Bjork, Laura Marling, Adrianne Lenker/Big Thief and David Byrne.
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The Rim is out now via Ghost Mountain Records and you can get it from the Sophia Corinne Bandcamp page.
