AIR award-nominated singer-songwriter Imogen Clark releases her new album The Art Of Getting Through and also announces two live dates in the UK on 10th July at The Green Note in London and 14th July in Nottingham at Running Horse Live.
Recorded across the iconic studios of Abbey Road in London, Peter Frampton’s Studio Phenix in Nashville and East West in Los Angeles, the album not only took Imogen on a musical pilgrimage, but also took her to the depths of her songwriting, the album unfolding like a chapter in a deeply personal diary.
Imogen explains “These songs are about the messiness of life, the layers of injury and hurt that build resilience and how you never really get a clean slate or a fresh start. There is no starting over, there is only getting through”.
The production of the album began in May 2023, kicking off a marathon year crescendoing today with the LP’s release. October 2023 saw the release of ‘If I Want In’, a fiery mission statement about breaking away from society’s expectations. Recorded in Abbey Road backed by members of Gang of Youths and featuring Camp Cope‘s Georgia Maq on backing vocals, the track debut to rave reviews, with Beats Per Minute calling it “textbook-perfect” and containing their “favorite line of 2023: “Everyone I know is either married or in rehab, I couldn’t say which one is worse.”
2024 has seen a cascade of touring accompanied by tantalizing tastes of the album, kicking off with the cathartic ode to pettiness ‘All Hard Feelings’ (powered by Elvis Costello’s rhythm section), love anthem ‘Big One’ and the defiant ‘The Noise’ (both featuring Dawes drummer Griffin Goldsmith), the latter accompanied by a gender-flipped homage to the iconic video for her idol Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Dancing in the Dark’. Watch The Noise here
Elsewhere on the album, Imogen gives the counsel to her teenage self as she battles an eating disorder (‘Silhouette’), sings with bitter irony over screaming guitars over the justified paranoia informing women’s interactions with men (‘Natural Predator’), aches to be understood by a lover like she is by her friends (‘Like A Man’), lusts after a taken man (‘Sebastian’), rocks out the remains of a situationship (‘Stopover’) and confronts the darkest moment of her life in the confessional piano ballad ‘The Last of Me’.
Imogen adds, “It was the lowest point of the pandemic, the culmination of a harrowing descent of my already precarious mental health situation to the edge of a cliff. For the first time in my life, I didn’t want to exist anymore and I began to understand how a friend of mine had gotten to the point of taking that exit route.”
The song poured from Imogen as she sat at the piano one night. Climbing from despair to determination, she makes the decision to tell the world and herself that she wanted to live and she was going to fight for it. For a deeply personal song, the recording had to be just right. Recorded at East West Studios in Los Angeles, where the Beach Boys made Pet Sounds, Bo Koster from My Morning Jacket came in to play piano and Gus Seyfertt was on bass. What doesn’t feel to Imogen is Jim Keltner joined on drums. The word legend doesn’t cover it; fifty years of being the heartbeat on more classic recordings that you can name, including ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door’ by Bob Dylan and ‘Jealous Guy’ by John Lennon.
Rounding out the album is the inspiring title track, currently climbing the AAA Top 100 in the US, and the stunning closing song ‘If Your Heart Never Breaks’. Written with Grammy-winning songwriting icon Jim Lauderdale, the song is accompanied by a stunning string arrangement by Bright Eyes’ Nate Walcott.
Imogen has spent the months since recording these songs showcasing them to the world. She’s shared the stage with The Buckleys, CLEWS, Frenzal Rhomb‘s Lindsay McDougall, Molly Millington, Sarah Belkner and Timothy James Bowen at her IMOJAM 2023 show, toured with The Tallest Man on Earth, Sons of the East, BOWEN * YOUNG, Andrew Farriss ofINXS, Dan Sultan and Robyn Hitchcock across Australia, before fulfilling a decade long dream and relocating to Nashville at the start of this month, kicking off her time as a Nashville residence with a sold out show at 3rd and Lindsley, headlining a songwriters in the round show with friends BOWEN * YOUNG, before playing packed album launch shows in Nashville and Los Angeles.
Today, Imogen stands as a testament to the power of transcending one’s familiar boundaries, a journey fueled by her roots and an unwavering ambition that has taken her from the teenager who honed her chops playing Western Sydney bars to global stages from the US to Europe. As she establishes herself into a vibrant new city and releases The Art Of Getting Through into the world, this is truly only just the beginning.
TRACKLIST
1. If I Want In
2. Silhouette
3. Natural Predator
4. Big One
5. Like A Man
6. All Hard Feelings
7. Squinters
8. The Last Of Me
9. The Art Of Getting Through
10. Stopover
11. Sebastian
12. The Noise
13. If Your Heart Never Breaks
About Author
