STAY LOOSE are more than a little pleased to welcome a new Tyneside talent to their burgeoning roster of excellent song-crafters in IMOGEN, a singer-songwriter with a voice that alternates between confessional soothing and a powerful soar, singing out the pain in healing catharsis.
Pain? Well the single’s title, a one-word, two-syllable image of stark and graphic potency, and the song itself concerns a disability which resulted in surgery, after which she had to learn to walk again; it was penned about that period during which her mind – acute, watchful – was at odds with her body. “My feet were in my stomach, my stomach in my head”, she sings; the whole world topsy-turvy and awry, as anyone who’s been properly ill will know too well.
She travels through despond to emerge into a brighter place by the song’s end, the fire of the crescendo descending to a capella calm; as illustrated in the video, in which she’s depicted ascending a spiral staircase into blinding light, leaving the twilight of infirmity behind; a spectral ward of blood-red light and drapes in which she wanders bemused and adrift.
This, her debut single for her new label, caps a fortnight in which she’s seen her single launch show, at Maida Vale’s Laylow, sell out in 24 hours; and during which she’s grabbed herself a place on the longlist for the Green Man Festival 2022.
IMOGEN says of her haunting hello: “I wanted to write something that depicted the feeling of being out of kilter with yourself – grasping for some sort of control over your own mind, body, existence.
“I took my literal experiences and used them as imagery to explain some complicated feelings; what happened in the end was an exorcism.”
IMOGEN’s “Bloodbag” is out today on all streaming platforms.
Connect with IMOGEN elsewhere on the web at Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and on Facebook.
