Singer-songwriter Sadie Campbell released her EP “Darkroom” on Aug. 27. The project sees Campbell take a departure from country-rock and step into a new genre-bending, box-defying space. The EP is a raw analysis of Campbell’s own mental health struggles during the lockdown period of 2020. The EP features three tracks —“Fade,” “Aftermath” and “Euphoria”— each of which are equally explosive, powerful, soulful and unflinchingly honest as Campbell fully embraces her darker, deeper side. 

Darkroom

Before the release of “Darkroom,” Campbell let me into her creative process and hopes for the project in an interview. 

Listening to the EP, I got the sense of a progression — a journey. The beginning of the title track, “Fade,” is heavy, imposing and dark. This heaviness is contrasted by the lighter, airier closing track “Euphoria.” When asked if the EP was created to be experienced in a certain order, Campbell said, “Yes, I really wanted ‘Darkroom’ to be a full sequence. When I was kind of envisioning it and how it would go, I wanted it to have some elevation. Like when you’re in some dark spaces in your life, I wanted it to feel like there was a light at the end of the tunnel — that was the point of ‘Euphoria.'”

With the EP being a departure from anything Campbell has previously released, she spoke on the album’s darker inspiration. “I was at such a low place in my life that music, not that the other songs that I’ve released didn’t come from an honest place, but this came from somewhere else… If you have a backdoor in your brain, you open that and you go in there.” That’s “Darkroom” in a sense. 

Is this EP pop? Is it dark folk? “We didn’t really know what genre we were making. We’re just using this as art to express how we were feeling,” Campbell said. “There’s been times in the past where I’ve used influences as kind of a guideline to what I wanted sonically my music to sound like, and with this we didn’t really have anything like that. It was just pure expression.” 

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

When I asked Campbell what she wants listeners to get from this EP, she said, “Embracing the dark room sometimes is necessary, instead of trying to run from it, or hide from it, or pretend it’s not happening… For people to just know that they’re not alone and that they can talk about it. We all have those highs and lows, that’s just being human.”

Why does she make music? It’s simple. “It connects us, it can connect a group of strangers. That’s powerful to me. That’s the whole ‘why’ behind it: we’re all kind of in this together.”

Campbell is looking forward to getting back on the road just as much as we are to getting back to live music. But until then, we’ll have her powerful, creative force in “Darkroom.”

“Darkroom” and previous singles are available on all music streaming platforms.

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