The selkie is a recurring figure across the folktales of various northern cultures. A mythological being which exist as a seal while in the water, but is able to shed its skin and transform into a human on land. The archetypal story involves a man finding such a being on the shore and stealing her skin so as to prevent her returning to the sea. They get married, have children, but all the while the selkie pines for her skin and a return to her original form and freedom beneath the waves.
Described as “a Selkie’s hymn to salvaged skin,” Sabine Colleen’s new single ‘Three Words’ draws upon such stories to explore themes of identity and selfhood amid periods of love and loss. With fingerstyle guitar supported by analog tape loops and a variety of lo-fi filters, the track rises and falls across its runtime, a constant push and pull between the shallows and depths as Colleen weighs the allure of each. Soothing in its textures but possessing a certain mystery too, as though in full knowledge that beneath the calming tidal rhythms lies vast uncharted spaces of water.
The single builds upon the style first set out on Circle of Trees, Sabine Colleen’s debut full-length released in 2021, which established her willingness to blur the line between myth and reality to explore the truths of life. Just as folktales and fables are a way to elucidate the things too personal to otherwise speak, Colleen’s songs blend old wisdom with immediate emotion to map the depths of the human condition.