Sophie Penman – Albert Street (2025)
Sophie Penman is a singer-songwriter based in Glasgow, Scotland, with one album, 2023’s Written in the Books, under her belt. After two years, she has released a new single called ‘Albert Street’. Whereas Written in the Books celebrated a full pop sound, ‘Albert Street’ is slim and trim, recorded with Penman on vocals and piano, Ryan Thrupp on drums, and Duncan Penman on bass.
Kicking off with a sauntering drumbeat, Penman looks back on a time of finding love through the lens of having seen the close of it. “From friends to lovers to friends/ That’s how our story did end,” she sings near the end of the song. But most of the story focuses on the pair wandering around town, talking, and falling in love with the kind of earnest aimlessness that’s so easy to feel when you’re young (said the ageing music reviewer).
The song gets its title from a brief mention of the street in the second verse when the friend/lover takes the singer’s picture. It speaks to the significance of the moment, in keeping with the song’s travelogue feel and with a greater clarity than if the words “Albert Street” had been repeated over and over again in chorus. Instead, for the chorus, Penman uses the image of sunny days banished by cloudy days, which will also move on, giving the memory a sense of completion.
Bittersweet though ‘Albert Street’ is, Penman’s gospel-tinged piano playing and soulful singing keep the song from being morose or maudlin. In fact, one simply can’t imagine Penman being moody or self-pitying. There’s too much girth in her alto, which can go so easily to soulful, gospel strains. And that’s really where the focus of the song lies.
Written in the Books navigates a wealth of pop music sounds and emerges with a clean, full sound that shows her depth as a songwriter. But ‘Albert Street’ strips all that away to an unadorned trio of instruments and the interaction between Penman’s voice and her piano playing. It makes the ideal vehicle for this memory to really sink into the listener’s mind.
Find out more about Sophie Penman on her official website, Facebook, Instagram, Bandcamp, Soundcloud and Spotify.
This artist was discovered via Musosoup #sustainablecurator
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