[Australia] Georgia Fields: New Single 'Find Your Way Back'
KATIE BROWN - 19 OCT 2021
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“And it’s hard to know where you belong / If you’re not quite sure where you’ve come from / Feel like a piece of misdirected mail”
Being lost in territory that is familiar - nothing is more disconcerting: that particular disorienting and heady dizziness that takes hold when you walk a street you once knew well but now can hardly recognise. New buildings, new scenery - even the people you used to know, you trace their faces for signs of the fellowship you once shared, but draw only blanks. And what happens when you turn those same eyes to yourself, and find yourself lost within the broad landscape of your own being, where what once was seems to be not only unreachable, but light years away from what it is now? This is the impression carried in Australian artist Georgia Fields’ poignant new art-pop single “Find Your Way Back”.
As Georgia says, “I moved a lot as a kid; I went to 7 different schools. So this song started as a love letter to the lost places of my childhood, about searching for home. But after my second son was born, I uncovered this hidden layer in the lyrics, and I started singing it from the perspective of reaching out for – and grieving – the lost parts of my pre-motherhood-self.”
Employing clever techniques of percussive vocal loops, snippets of syncopated rhythm and a bridge with catchy acapella elements, the single showcases Georgia’s smooth, rich vocals surrounded by instrumentation that holds both her voice and the lyrical content of the song in a perfect balance. Seeing her step into a deeper richness of sound, the track features warm Wurlitzer tones, nostalgic reverbed guitar, and solid, steady drums, all combining and growing in intensity as the song progresses. In its change in feel, the bridge acts as a kind of reflective interruption to the thought process contained in the lyrics, and when it returns back to the main melody, the song continues to swell and swirl with added layers of instrumentation and vocals, aptly mirroring the dizziness of disorientation. All of these mesmerising layers cut out right at the very end to allow Georgia’s last line to close out the song, as she sings with a final emphasis, “…find your way back”.
A collaboration with producer/drummer Joshua Barber (Vic Park, Greta Ray, Emma Anglesea), “Find Your Way Back” is the first single from forthcoming third studio album Hiraeth (pronounced "hee-raith") that the pair are working on together. Fittingly, the title refers to a Welsh word that refers to ‘a profound longing for a home that you can’t return to, as it doesn’t exist anymore’. A live video of the song accompanies the release, which was filmed at MOTH (Music on the Hill) earlier in the year as part of their Cocoon Project - a series that featured six standout recording artists who wrote or released new material during isolation. Alongside this work, Georgia has also recently launched new project ‘Mother Lode’, an online community and resource dedicated to musicians who are mothers.
In its nostalgia for what once was, “Find Your Way Back” suggests the idea of someone who has been ‘out to sea’ within themselves for quite some time, but is beginning to sense that the balancing ballast of identity hidden within disorientation and reorientation is carried in the depths of their own being, and has been all along. Locations and situations may change, never to be experienced again in quite the same way, but we can always ‘find our way back’. An upbeat, poignant and catchy track, the single is made all the better by how relatable it is: everyone has moments where a sense of home, both physically and within ourselves, feels so far off - but that old adage always proves true: home is where the heart is, and sometimes it’s a matter of meeting yourself again that reconnects you with its threshold of welcome.
Listen to “Find Your Way Back” below.