FEATURE:
Revisiting…
Suki Waterhouse – I Can't Let Go
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I am looking back…
at quite a few albums from last year for Revisiting… This feature is for albums from the past five years that either need some new attention or were underrated when they were released. Suki Waterhouse’s debut album, I Can’t Let Go, got critical love and attention - though I did not feel as many of the mainstream sites and papers reviewed it. So many of the songs should be played on the radio now. It is a great album that album with so many wonderful and memorable moments. I am going to finish with a couple of reviews for Waterhouse’s brilliant 2022 debut. Also check out the follow-up E.P., Milk Teeth. That compiled her non-album singles. I Can’t Let Go came out on 22nd April, 2022. You may recognise Waterhouse from the U.S. drama, Daisy Jones & The Six. The U.S.-based, U.K.-born actor and model is also one of the most interesting and promising artists around. I feel she stands out in a very busy, varied and competitive industry. I will move on soon. First, Rough Trade provide details about Suki Waterhouse’s I Can’t Let Go:
“Nowadays, voice memos, videos, and pictures chronicle our lives in real-time. We trace where we’ve been and reveal where we’re going. However, Suki Waterhouse catalogs the most intimate, formative, and significant moments of her life through songs. You might recognize her name or her work as singer, songwriter, actress but you’ll really get to know the multi-faceted artist through her music. Memories of unrequited love, fits of longing, instances of anxiety, and unfiltered snapshots interlock like puzzle pieces into a mosaic of well-worn country, ‘90s-style alternative, and unassuming pop. She writes the kind of tunes meant to be grafted onto dusty old vinyl from your favorite vintage record store, yet perfect for a sun-soaked festival stage. Her first album for Sub Pop, I Can’t Let Go, is a testament to her powers as a singer and songwriter.
In Suki’s words: “The album is called I Can’t Let Go because for years it felt like I was wearing heavy moments on my sleeve and it just didn’t make sense to do so anymore. There’s so much that I’ve never spoken about. Writing music has always been where it felt safe to do so. Every song for the record was a necessity. In many ways, I’ve been observing my life as an outsider, even when I’ve been on the inside. It’s like I was a visitor watching things happen.”
Growing up in London, Suki gravitated towards music’s magnetic pull. She listened to the likes of Alanis Morissette and Fiona Apple, and Oasis held a special place in her heart. She initially teased out this facet of her creativity with a series of singles, generating nearly 20 million total streams independently. Nylon hailed her debut track, “Brutally,” as “what a Lana Del Rey deep cut mixed with Joni Mitchell’s ‘Both Sides, Now’ would sound like.” In addition to raves from Garage, Vice and Lemonade Magazine, DUJOR put it best: “Suki Waterhouse’s music has swagger.” Suki is constantly consuming artists of all stripes, and, in the lead-up to making I Can’t Let Go, she was particularly drawn to the work of Sharon Van Etten, Valerie June, Garbage, Frazey Ford, Lou Doillon, and Lucinda Williams. After falling in love with Hiss Golden Messenger’s Terms of Surrender, she reached out to its producer Brad Cook (Bon Iver, War On Drugs, Snail Mail, Waxahatchee) to help define the sound of I Can’t Let Go. On I Can’t Let Go, Suki not only catalogs her life up to this point, but she also fulfills a lifelong ambition.
“When I’ve been stuck or feel out of touch with a sense of inner meaning and outer purpose, I’ve found both through searching my memories and finding those events buried in the shadowy areas of the psyche where they were ignored,” she says. “So many times of change in my life have required return visits—especially at the transitions through to the next stages. The album is an exploration of those moments when there is nothing left to lose. What is left and can’t be thrown away is the self”.
This great interview from Rolling Stone UK is worth a read. I am going to start with quoting from an interview between The Guardian and Suki Waterhouse from April 2022. I think that a lot of her fans are wondering whether there will be an E.P. coming before the end of this year – or whether she has plans for a second album next year. She is very much in demand across music and Hollywood right now. I think that the two compliment each other and work well when it comes to Waterhouse’s cinematic songs:
“ This is not a golden era for women writing love songs about men. With the exception of Lana Del Rey, the last decade of female-fronted pop has been defined by revenge anthems and breakup bangers, with “dump him” a common refrain. But Suki Waterhouse isn’t sold.
“I find the whole ‘dump him’ thing very toxic,” she whispers into her oat milk latte in a quiet nook of Notting Hill’s Electric cinema in west London. “I get it, but it’s important not to underestimate how incredible it is to be with somebody. And also how yummy and wonderful masculinity can be when it’s the good kind, when it’s warm and protecting … ” She pauses, smiling knowingly. “Anyway, let’s not go on that tangent!”
This week, Waterhouse is releasing her debut album, I Can’t Let Go, through Sub Pop. Produced by Brad Cook, the man Pitchfork called “indie’s secret weapon” (he has worked on albums by Bon Iver and the War on Drugs), it is 10 tracks of sweeping Americana, with heart-on-sleeve lyrics that land somewhere between Taylor Swift’s simplicity and Del Rey’s fatalism (“I believe in old-fashioned things / Imagining us,” she sings on the lead single, Melrose Meltdown).
PHOTO CREDIT: Dana Trippe
“So much of my life has been this weird blur,” says Waterhouse, running her hands through her hair – dishevelled but somehow still immaculate. I ask whether romance is the biggest force behind her songwriting. “It’s literally how I remember everything,” she says. “Who I was in love with at the time, how we broke up, and what happened after.”
Waterhouse has been in the public eye since she was 16, starting her career as a model in the late 2000s. For more than a decade she has been a fixture on runways and magazine covers, a bona fide “it girl”, regularly papped with her friends and fellow models Adwoa Aboah and Cara Delevingne. Then there’s the acting career, which has seen her appear in a mishmash of blockbuster romcoms (Love, Rosie), cult black comedies (Assassination Nation) and documentary-style TV series (the upcoming Daisy Jones & the Six). Throw in a photography exhibition here, an accessories brand there – not to mention a slew of high-profile relationships with the likes of Bradley Cooper, Diego Luna and, currently, the Batman himself, Robert Pattinson.
It is hard not to feel that this latest addition to her pop-cultural portfolio is a little … low stakes? “I’m really aware that it’s like: ‘Oh, you’ve done modelling, you’ve done acting, and now you’re gonna give me this album.’ I’m really wary of people just being like: ‘Fuck off!’” she admits. “I totally get it.”
Rather than manifesting a sudden burst of confidence, I Can’t Let Go came together like a photo album: snapshots of different times, places and people. The breathy acoustic track Slip was written during a trip to Montreal, where she went to work with a chef-cum-musician on the recommendation of someone she met on a night out; the reverb-heavy ballad My Mind was written during the pandemic in her west London flat, where building work meant the windows were blacked out for months; Melrose Meltdown was inspired not by the trip she took with a friend to Bhutan (“We were drinking too much and feeling a bit shit”), but by a text she read on the plane home. “She was showing me some messages and I was moved by her alcoholic ex-boyfriend, who’s really quite a good poet in a way.”
The album has a rose-tinted energy, with restrained backdrops that marry 60s girl-group sentiments with dreamy modern pop and lyrics that would be at home on early 2010s Tumblr – there’s plenty of “crying on your milk-white sheets” and getting “faded into oblivion”. It’s very two drinks into an evening, when emotions are generous and arise as if out of nowhere.
“I definitely approached it thinking quite cinematically,” she says, citing Thelma & Louise and Fruits of My Labor by the country singer Lucinda Williams as inspirations for her goal of making something that “sounds good in the middle of the desert”. Fittingly for the subject matter, the space they were meant to record in fell through and they ended up in a wedding hall, with Cook and members of Bon Iver bringing Waterhouse’s demos to life in a bridesmaids’ room crowded with makeup lights and “Live, Laugh, Love” cushions”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images
Back in May 2022, Suki Waterhouse chatted with Atwood Magazine about her much anticipated debut. She was gearing up to hit the road appearing alongside the superb Father John Misty. I have a lot of love and respect for Waterhouse’s music. She is singular and distinct as a songwriter and vocalist. I hope to catch her on the road soon:
“It doesn’t really become about you, after a while,” she says of revisiting the past through songwriting and singing. “It’s also about finding a bliss within the good and the bad, (and) finding some kind of way that you’ve found some kind of peace within yourself.”
Waterhouse was inspired to continue putting pen to paper – and to hone in on a signature sound – through her friendship with Dave Sitek, famously of TV On The Radio. His eclectic influence left its mark on Waterhouse’s work. In past years honing her craft, she’d written with a wide cast of characters, but hadn’t quite found a driving influence.
It was a trip to famed Texas recording outpost Sonic Ranch with Sitek pre-pandemic that helped Waterhouse unlock even more of that creativity, working on demos, building bonfires and writing songs.
It was only a matter of time before she connected – via Sitek – with the producer of her debut LP, Brad Cook (you’ve heard his production work on albums by Hiss Golden Messenger and The War on Drugs).
Sitek had previously recorded with Cook via The Neverly Boys.
It was one song in particular by Hiss Golden Messenger – “Cat’s Eye Blue” – that had echoes of what Waterhouse wanted in her album, including “gentle pushes” and “drenched strings.”
Even without ever having met Cook before recording with him, Waterhouse felt things would work out – even if the recording process was delayed by the pandemic.
But the journey to getting the record out into the world wasn’t quite that simple once it was complete, either. Waterhouse didn’t have a label deal, and was ruminating on self-releasing it before landing with Sub Pop.
The multi-hyphenate Waterhouse kept the faith, though – it was right down there in her diary all along.
“If I was to show you the back of my diary pages…I always write down what I hope will happen as if it’s already happened,” Waterhouse says of yearning to sign with an outstanding record label.
Does she feel any pressure signing to a legendary label like the long-running Pacific Northwest stalwarts? Not exactly – gratitude is in no short supply.
“It’s such an amazing surprise and joy,” Waterhouse says. “It’s a new, exciting thing and it’s incredibly thrilling to me.”
The thrills, twists and turns aren’t in short supply, either – last fall, Waterhouse took the stage at two illustrious festivals (Atlanta rock hotspot Shaky Knees and the eclectic BottleRock Napa Valley), playing to the biggest crowds she’d ever seen – a long way from a high school assembly.
“You’re going out there and you’ve not done this before at all,” Waterhouse says with a laugh. She’s got plenty of support in her corner: She’s backed by an all-female band and gearing up for her biggest tour yet.
The tour in question? A cross-country jaunt supporting Father John Misty, one that essentially marks the most Waterhouse has seen of America. Stops include some of the country’s biggest venues: Try Red Rocks amphitheatre and Radio City Music Hall on for size, among others.
Bigger crowds present even bigger opportunities for Waterhouse, who’s ready to lean fully into the art of live performance.
“You can see this thing outside yourself and view it as an observer, and not just within yourself,” she says of taking the stage and delivering intensely personal tracks off I Can’t Let Go”.
I’ll round off with proof that I Can’t Let Go is an album worth investigating. It received some really positive reviews from critics. This is what The Line of Best Fit had to say when they sat down with the album. They focus on the remarkable storytelling that means you are immersed and pulled into these rich and sumptuous vignettes:
“Suki Waterhouse’s debut album is a shimmering soft-pop opus that revels in its self-indulgence, and shines all the more for it. Led by her soulful delivery and musically arranged only ever as much as it needs to be, ethereal atmosphere-weaving is the star quality of I Can’t Let Go.
Every vignette Waterhouse shares is simultaneously stripped-back and sumptuously deep, stunningly put together to focus on the storytelling. Each track is a tale in the same mode as the likes of Lana Del Rey’s Hollywood visions – an easy, seemingly obvious comparison, given the poetry of Waterhouse’s lyrics and the familiar, immersive sprawl of her musicality. It’s there in “Melrose Meltdown”’s polaroid moment of Malibu dreams in a metaphorical getaway car, “Wild Side”’s almost-but-not-quite idealism of a relationship’s moments of turmoil, “Put Me Through It”’s wistful stratospheric beauty.
But hone in closer, looking for specific points to draw comparison between Waterhouse and her contemporaries, the red threads fray a little – this is diaristic and personal on every level, and though comparisons are inevitable, they find themselves feeling defunct in the fact of the humanity that saturates I Can’t Let Go. Because as personal and sometimes painful as it is, it’s also really playful. Waterhouse explores her internal world with a wry smile here and there (“Bullshit On The Internet” is as self-awarely self-indulgent as you can get, and excellently, dreamily so), and isn’t really bothered if people are following, or enraptured, or enchanted. As striking and silky as the lyricism is, Waterhouse isn’t seeking poetic accolades for it, she’s just weaving her words to vocalise a state of being, and then the music to set it to.
Each moment deftly distinguishes itself from what came before, on an album that when you’re not listening to it, shimmers into a continuous ride of smooth, hazy undulations. There’s just enough of a line between cohesion and repetition that leaves I Can’t Let Go feeling like a world of its own without losing precision. “Devil I Know” is a standout, an early moment of sultry punctuation in basslines and hooks; “Slip” closes the album off like a segue into a synthy sunshine-pop, Jack Antonoff-esque production. Waterhouse isn’t just playful with her themes, she’s playful with her communication too.
If I Can’t Let Go does anything, it proves that Waterhouse deserves a spot in the romantic, Tumblr it-girl canon she firmly occupies as a model and an actress, as a musician. Her lyrics are snippets of beauty, her voice is intoxicating, her songwriting is immaculate. But, begrudgingly, I Can’t Let Go proves that Waterhouse may have no inclination to take up her spot in that canon, because this album isn’t for us to dissect and project – it’s a personal soundtrack, a mixtape of years that straddles the gorgeous and the gloomy sides”.
Finally, I will get to NME. Big fans of her work, they provided I Can’t Let Go a four-star review when they spent some time with it. No doubt one of the best albums of 2022 – and not just one of the best debuts -, I feel we all need to familiarise ourselves with such a beautiful and personal debut album. One from an artist you need to watch closely:
“I’m tired of keeping all my feelings to myself,” Suki Waterhouse sings on the glacial glow of ‘Put Me Through It’, but on her debut album, she doesn’t hold anything back. The Sub Pop-backed ‘I Can’t Let Go’ presents us with an intimate portrait of the British musician and actor’s life, coloured with a rush of intense and powerful emotions. Far from bottling things up or shying away from these internal sensations, it’s a record that lets its creator – and, by extension, us – feel everything.
Waterhouse’s first full-length effort embraces the peaks and troughs of life, turning even its ugly, dark sides into beautiful songs to help carry you through your own turmoil. ‘Melrose Meltdown’ morphs from a gracefully eerie opening to a dazzling piece of dusky, cinematic indie and tells a Hollywood-worthy story of romantic drama. “Welcome to my Melrose Meltdown / Nobody ever breaks up, we just break down,” she sighs over a minimal backing. “We really fucked it up / In diamonds and drugstores.” The sun-kissed strum of ‘Bullshit On The Internet’, in part, deals with seeing an ex photographed with a new partner and, thanks to social media, is relatable even if your old lovers’ new relationships aren’t racking up column inches in gossip mags.
There’s a strength and resilience to ‘I Can’t Let Go’ that comes from owning every angle of emotion and its creator letting herself take charge in situations that might lead to pain. “I’ma put some goddamn moves on you babe, I know you need it / Die a double death for you, death for your secrets,” she asserts on ‘Moves’, while the slinky ‘Devil I Know’ sees her knowingly sink into circumstances that are probably best avoided. “Back in hell, at least I’m comfortable,” Waterhouse shrugs on its chorus. “Hand to heart, I’m gonna stay faithful / To the devil I know.”
Throughout the album, the star drops hints at her influences – a tinge of Lana Del Rey and Mazzy Star there, a splash of Fiona Apple and Lucinda Williams there. Largely, though, the record twists those inspirations into her own brittle sound that complements the undercurrent of fragility running through the songs.
Like that line in ‘Put Me Through It’ suggests, Waterhouse was nervous to share her personal songwriting with the world. On her debut album, though, she overcomes that fear in impressive form – it might have taken six years to get here from her debut single, but ‘I Can’t Let Go’ was well worth the wait”.
A truly wonderful album from Suki Waterhouse, I Can’t Let Go is most definitely worth revisiting. A new single from this year, To Love, suggests something might be in the works already when it comes to album two. After a starring role in Daisy Jones & The Six, I wonder if that new exposure and musical experience (the series relates to a fictional band who have been compared with Fleetwood Mac) impacts the sounds of her second album. I think that a Waterhouse album with a touch of Rumours or Tusk-era Fleetwood Mac would be so interesting! Whenever that does arrive, it is…
GOING to be essential listening.