Sarah Grace White

A jolt from a dream, a catch of one’s own reflection in the rearview mirror, a movement over a thin line. Sarah Grace White writes music from these spaces, and today, she introduces a new single, “Sinkhole.”  Coming from a musical family, White always sang, and was encouraged to harmonize at all costs, or “find the middle,” as her mother used to say, leading to choirs in school, then bands, even a stint of Bulgarian throat singing. Like so many kids, White would sit on the bus with her iPod up to max volume, fixating on artists like Fiona Apple and Radiohead, later PJ Harvey and Roxy Music.

In her hometown of Los Angeles, White started a career as an actor, but found a dissonance between the art she wanted to make and the kind of workforce she began to enter. “I didn’t feel good at the entire environment of it, but I wanted to create, and I knew I needed to find my own way in.” Throughout this exploration, White was simultaneously, though secretly, exploring music – writing in her room, singing in the car, jotting down lyrics and phrases at odd moments, but afraid to commit to music publicly. Music kept gnawing at White until a natural breaking point – “the need overcame the fear and it felt harder to ignore it than to just do it.” White’s best friend gave her an ultimatum just a couple years back – sing or stop talking about it.

White chose to sing. She took a handful of songs to friend Jorge Balbi, a pro drummer (best known for his role in Sharon Van Etten’s band) and mixer but never a full producer for another artist. The two spent weeks compiling sounds and inspirations – The Durutti Column, Talk Talk, Kate Bush, The Blue Nile, New Order, and newer artists The Weather Station and Westerman, noting “music where you can hear the negative space, and you feel it in your whole body” –  before starting work on White’s debut EP, Are You Here This Time. The release, out February 2023,  unraveled itself through intricate, gentle catharsis, working through moments of quiet explosion – anthems circling questions of self-ownership, exuberance, devastation – giving the listener that precious feeling of sacred alone-ness. It also led to a US tour supporting Dehd and packed shows in Los Angeles and New York City where audiences were both lulled and energized by White’s expansive storytelling and effortless vocal tone.

Now White has teamed up with Balbi once again for new single, “Sinkhole,” which stays loyal to their penchant for cathartic soundscapes, grounded rhythm and thoroughly organic harmony. “I wanted the production to reflect the unreliable tint of memory,” explains White.  “We worked out of Valentine Studios in LA to build a reflective palette rife with small stories and space. There’s a very nostalgic, open quality to that studio, so we allowed the character of the room to speak for itself. This is a story song; I wanted the vocals to be confessional and direct, laid out plain at the forefront of a soundscape that is at once hypnotic and arresting, lulling the listener into the past while still pulling them forward. Like all the music I like, it is hopeful, and a little sad.”

“Sinkhole is a story of falling in love fast with a dead end train. I wrote it in the aftermath of its inevitable crash, finding solace in some imaginary place where it all meant something after all, a physical manifestation of synchronicity. Could it be while I’m thinking of you, you’re thinking of me too?” The chorus lilts with hope and desperation – “Somewhere out in black space / There is a mountain shrouded in green / Where the lovers think of each other / At the same time.”

Inspired by classic ‘90s music videos, French new wave, and California’s varied landscapes, the “Sinkhole” video, directed by Caroline Falls, unfolds the story of a sinkhole at the beach, and where it might take you if you fall in. Falls comments, “It was definitely a little on the nose to make a video about a hole for a song called ‘Sinkhole,’ but I don’t think there was any way around it. The lyrics to this song tell such a beautiful story, and to depict anything other than that story felt like a failure. The director of photography, Yoni Shrira, and I played with shooting on tape and super 8 to really give these dueling ‘worlds’ (I like to think of them as alternate realities) their texture.”