Last Month we featured ‘Tiny Beam of Light‘, the new single from singer-songwriter Julie Arsenault. The track was the first taste of her forthcoming record, Nothing Sweeter, on Son Canciones, and was a reassuring look at how the promise of summer can signal hope and healing. “Wrapped in the golden romanticism of 50s and 60s pop, we wrote in a preview, “the song swoons and sways in the melancholic rays of the late afternoon sun.”
Now Arsenault has released a second taste of the album, ‘Start Again’, yet another rich folk pop song of complicated emotions, detailing a struggle through despondency and discouragement in the hope of starting over. There’s absolutely nothing saccharine about Arsenault’s work, every dab of sweetness offset by a sour reality, each ray of light throwing a shadow of equal size and weight.
On ‘Start Again’, this comes in the form of a frank exploration of the everyday devastation of living with depression, a seemingly endless malaise where even the smallest acts begin to seem impossible. “Again, I find it hard to motivate myself to brush my teeth,” she sings, “I know I must smile despite the pain that’s hiding underneath.” But, in a theme that’s becoming a characteristic of Nothing Sweeter, the song offers promise of change too. Its solutions are simple but no less powerful, small routines, acts of good, the slightest glimmer that things could work out after all.
Thirty days to make a habit and
A split second to break a heart but
I will wake up early tomorrow and
We can make a brand new start
Again