Sparxsea – On the Sea LP (out Sep. 13)

Soulful singer-songwriter Sparxsea’s gentle new indie folk-pop album On the Sea (out Sep. 13) begins with her leaving home to set sail on her “Little Wooden Boat.” Each subsequent song is a part of her own hero’s journey, but there’s no returning home. The album ends with her sinking into the “Deep.” It isn’t death that she finds there, but a whole new world to explore. There’s hope in Sparxsea’s pain. She’s a sister in trauma reminding us that we’re not alone, and although this world can be shallow and cold, we can find the warmth and love to carry on and thrive given time, friendship and compassion.

On the Sea features Dana Colley & Jerome Deupree of Morphine, Tim Reynolds (Dave Matthews Band), Nikki Glaspie (Beyoncé, Dumpstaphunk, Nth Power), Rebecca Kingsley (Wyclef Jean), Nate Edgar (Nth Power, John Brown’s Body), Devon Colella (QUAD), and David Yearwood (Forét Endôrmie). It was produced by Will Bradford (SeepeopleS, theWorst) and Will Holland (Pixies, Dead Can Dance) at Chillhouse Studios in Boston.

Sparxsea was featured in the L.L. Bean x Bull Moose Music summer concert series, opened multiple sold-out theater shows for Tim Reynolds, shared the stage with SeepeopleS, Clarisse Karasira, grammy-winner Dave Gutter of The Rustic Overtones, and performed at the ARME Boot Camp 2 Festival and Maine Folk Festival. Her debut single, “Alive” (2016), was featured in the 2022 indie film Dole Mates (DBC Productions), and her haunting pop ballad “Don’t Let The Fire Die,” was composed for the 2019 Damnationland soundtrack and film festival.

Sparxsea’s name, art and music confronts the dichotomy of the human condition. Fire and water meets beauty and pain. The happiness of light mingles with the subaquatic darkness of the depths. The radiance of her soul twists like a celestial leviathan around the harrowing path that led her to this collection of songs.

On the Sea kicks off with “Little Wooden Boat,” an ethereal dreamscape about leaving everything you know behind for the great unknown. It embraces the discomfort of being out of your element. It encourages bravery in the face of trials and tribulations, especially when you feel at your most alone and unsure. It’s an ancient metaphor that feels fresh and poignant through Sparxsea’s calming vocals. The video for “Little Wooden Boat” stars Holly Martin (Wind Hippie Sailing), who’s been circumnavigating the globe in a solo sailboat for the past five years.

The indie-pop ballad “Roses in the Street” balances piano synths and modern drum programming with acoustic guitars, Sparxsea’s romantic vocal delivery, and exceptional harmonies. It’s an electro-rock slow dance that toys with the stark imagery of a single rose growing through a city sidewalk. It’s an inspirational song that acts as a personal cheerleader, reminding you that you have the strength to get through the hard parts of life.

“This is a ‘darkest before the dawn’ song,” says Sparxsea. “That last hour before dawn, before that rose breaks through the concrete into the street and becomes something beautiful for people to appreciate. I write about what I need to get through hard times, words that I need to hear. It’s a song about abundance. There’s enough love out there for everyone. You just have to be open to it. Everything can seem very hard until you break through.”

The “Roses in the Street” video was shot at Sandy Point, Maine, where a kaleidoscopic menagerie of roses move from darkness and fire to daylight and water. In a striking image, Sparxsea moves like a goddess among manmade structures that contrast against the natural coastline. She then plucks a rose from the clouds she walks on, as the sun rises.

The jangle pop “Daylight” is a shining star among some of her more desolate songs, with its driving drum beat from Deupree and bright guitars reminiscent of R.E.M. or Alvvays. It’s a lyrical call to action to give someone your support and to reevaluate your own support network. It’s important that we show in words and actions that we believe in our friends and family. “I see a daylight burning bright in you / and rays full of golden truth / seeding creation in my heart / a garden full of memories / an everlasting light,” she sings.

“I’d dream of these beautiful gardens and think they were so far away,” says Sparxsea. “One day I realized we are both the gardens and the light. The light to grow that garden is there, inside of all of us. Then, our gardens lay seeds of creation for others. It’s not as easy as flipping a lightswitch to get through hard times, but maybe hearing my words will uplift someone, even just a little bit.”

The beautifully cinematic video for “Daylight” is brimming with love and compassion. It follows Sparxsea as she sings and plays her guitar, intercut with heartwarming interactions with wild mustang horses rescued from neglectful and abusive homes at Ever After Mustang Rescue ranch in Biddeford, Maine. In 2022, the matriarch and director of Ever After passed away and they’re now in great need of donations and volunteer support to care for their ten remaining horses, down from thirty. The family hopes to revive the farm back to its full glory as a seaside sanctuary, rehabilitation, and community riding center.

“Daylight” will be released via non-profit label CommunityZ RecordZ, who works with influential artists to give back to grassroots charities in their hometowns, with a portion of the profits going to help Ever After get back on its feet.

The atmospheric and chill “Essence of Me” is a dancey journey towards building a happy life — musically and meditatively transcendent. The finger-picked acoustic guitar breathes life into indie-pop electronic drums as Sparxsea’s layered vocals gush heart-on-her-sleeve confessional truths. “Tomorrow’s the day I’m moving far away / leave everything / bringing favorite things and love / placing every single piece so beautifully/ ’till walls tell stories of our adventure in the sky / this is the essence of me,” she sings. It’s a personal song of leaving your emotional baggage behind to build something new, and to always embrace growth.

“Although my life is blessed with beauty and love,” says Sparxsea, “the difficulty of growing up with alcoholic parents, and fearing the constant fighting for 18 years, created a huge people-pleaser out of me. Safety became my happiness. I built an existence by monitoring my surroundings, reacting for peaceful outcomes, and staying silent with my own desires and emotions. Therefore, I built a ‘safe’ life that harbored an ever-deepening well of secrets and pain, along with an ever-burning desire to express it all. ‘Essence’ is about stripping away all the safeguards we build throughout our lives and just letting loose, having fun, and being swept away in the moment. I think we can all sing this song for ourselves. At the end of the day, our inner child wants to play.”

The video for “Essence of Me” was shot in the bayou outside of New Orleans. Its imagery of nature and Sparxsea are visually intertwined through avant garde multiple exposures that echo the tumultuous trek and ultimate joy that got her to this point in her life.

“While we were filming in the swamp,” says Sparxsea, “after everything else was stripped away, we were left with standing water and stuff that hadn’t been dealt with for a long time. I was still full of feelings, still full of things similar to a swamp. I felt more and more excited as I went through the process of editing the video. I felt like I’d gone from the bottom of the barrel to this point of celebration.”

In a whirlwind romance that wasn’t meant to last, “Chariot” takes on the spirit of adventure through electronic beats and Sparxsea’s singer-songwriter earnestness. Sparxsea met a man with a boat who planned on sailing the world. They’d take his barely functioning dingy up and down the coast, hunting for sea glass until it was time for him to sail away.

A campfire crackles in the background of “Glow” as Sparxsea sings and plays her acoustic guitar alongside Colley on the bass clarinet. It’s a gentle song that embraces peaceful childhood memories of nature. There’s wonder and awe in the stillness and space left between the two musicians as Sparxsea continues to embrace metaphors of fire and water.

The folk-pop “Forever Love” is a tender and moving ode to love and the changing seasons of our lives. It’s brought to life by Deupree’s sympathetically emotive drumwork and Reynolds’ sensitive classical guitar picking. Written in the aftermath of her mother’s sudden opioid death and a codependent and tumultuous seven-year relationship, Sparxsea heals us and herself with her soulful voice and story of hope.

“Tim was on tour with TR3,” says Sparxsea, “and came into Chillhouse after his Boston show. We worked on the song from like midnight to three in the morning. It was such a fun late-night session and I was just in awe of how beautiful his classical guitar tracks were laid down. It was cool to get both Tim and Jerome into Chillhouse to record.”

The piano-pop “Glisten” is about the light her grandmother left when she passed away. Sparxsea’s flute harmonies float and flutter, embracing her belief in the transmutation of light after death. “This is a very healing song,” says Sparxsea. “We’ve all lost people in our life. We can all identify with loss. It’s universal. My mother enjoyed that song. I feel a strong connection to my mom through that song. It’s helped me heal.”

The anthemically cinematic “Gold” was co-written with Kingsley (best known for her bachata collaboration with Wyclef Jean to cover Fugees’ “Killing me Softly with his Song”). Sparxsea and Kingsley trade verses over big orchestral strings and stadium-splashed drums by Glaspie. It’s a song stating that our self-worth doesn’t diminish despite difficult life circumstances, that our brilliance shines even brighter because of them. “Thirty cents overdrawn / million things going wrong / ’till you remember / you’re rich in heart and soul / you’re gold,” they sing together in the chorus.

The soul-ballad “Circles” is an organic piano-and-vocals performance that’s a statement track in the sphere of Adele or Alicia Keys. It’s a song crafted to inspire young girls, or perhaps a song sung to the ghost of Sparxsea’s past self. It encourages breaking the cycles of trauma, to find the strength to realign your heart and your place in the world. It’s the catharsis that this album deserves as the penultimate song before ending with “Deep.”

Collective trauma meets collective healing in the powerful yet somber “Deep.” It opens with a dark, scratchy, synthetic cello that echoes its lyrical theme of healing as a solitary endeavor while feeling a part of the greater world at the same time. It’s clacking metal polyrhythmic percussion emphasizes the feeling of sinking into mysterious depths. Its contemplative and eerie quietness bridges the ethereal fae of Enya with the devilry of Nick Cave.

“I was looking back at the rest of the album,” says Sparxsea, “and after dealing with my anxiety and healing, I was ready to go deep. My little wooden boat was built up into a ship, but now it was sinking. Going deep. Once you’re there, it’s not easy to feel the feelings. It’s messy. Going deep is the healing part. This song leads into the next record I’m working on. I’ve gone so deep that I’m exploring the surface of a new world — a thundering dark, ethereal, orchestral dream that tells secrets and alchemizes worlds with its electric current.”