BRINGING new life into the world and fresh hope for a budding spring, Strathspey folkie Rachel Sermanni is all set to drop her first EP in what feels like too long, actually, too long; and she’s throwing up the windows on that forthcoming release with the bell-clear offering to the fates of “Swallow Me”, which you can hear herein.
“Swallow Me” was written just a fortnight before the arrival of her first child, and documents all the life-cycling profundity of the perinatal experience; the connections, the hopes, the dreams – and the fears. And it embodies it with a silky-smooth, country-folk delicacy.
If you’re familiar with Rachel’s very personal aesthetic, you’ll know that she writes and sings from the heart; about how she interplays with the world looming large and about how her own spirituality, her passion, her wish to engage deeply. Impending motherhood was to prove a consciousness-shifting test of her life as lived so far. She’s always been free spirited, letting her feelings guide her across the world, touring, creating, relating. What would change with the arrival of a newborn?
Let it flow; let it be, seemed to be the answer the universe gave her.
“This song is me asking for some sort of relief, or maybe release,” she says. “I’m basically asking that the universe give me a break or, at least, a pat on the back.
“Some form of divine acknowledgement of the heavy lifting I’d been doing (physically and psychologically) in coming to surrender into the changes – of becoming a ma – and finding love in what felt like a scary situation. In its entirety, with the chorus woven in, it is a balm in that it accepts that this path is my path,” she concludes.
The EP, out in June, takes the same title and explores this seachange in her life; fearing a future where she cannot follow her whims so easily. She sat with her anxieties and her fears and reached acceptance.
“The thread that weaves most clearly throughout this collection is one of letting go,” she says.
“Jellyfish go where the current flows. It takes courage to be passive. If you can accept everything, you can embody the jellyfish.”
Rachel Sermanni’s Swallow Me EP will be out on June 4th. Connect with Rachel on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
