I think Joan & The Giants are one of the best bands on the local music scene. I seem to fall a little more in love with them with every release. “Sleep Alone” is no exception. If you’re yet to discover how brilliant this band is, let yourself get swept up in this dreamy rock ballad. Vocalist and songwriter Grace Newton-Wordsworth said the song was inspired by the repression she felt growing up.
“I loved most of my childhood, but there were definitely some difficult times where I felt quite trapped in my body – I grew up in a loving but intense Christian home and while I still hold onto a lot of the core kind values, there were some parts of my childhood experience that were incredibly suffocating,” she admitted. “I spent years hiding my sexuality, and parts of myself that I still struggle to be open with. The line ‘You take me back to when I was a kid, begging for someone to save me. It leaves me frozen, trapped in the morgue again’ – I feel like sometimes relationships can bring a lot of sadness to the surface of things you’ve been holding onto your whole life. When you finally meet someone who you open up to, a lot of wounds can be opened with that.”
Joan & The Giants are just about the wrap up their first headlining tour, but you can catch the at their final show tomorrow night at The Bird in Boorloo/Perth.
Image used with permission from beehive; credit: Ashlyn Burley