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Jan 08, 2024 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Davey Pentecost

Fans last heard from Brighton-based singer/songwriter Bess Atwell with her 2021 sophomore album, Already, Always, which introduced Atwell’s sparse, lyrical, and emotive style of indie folk to a swath of new listeners. Since then, Atwell has been relatively quiet. In 2022 she shared Already, Rearranged, a collection of reworked tracks from her sophomore record, followed by a pair of singles last year, “Sylvester” and “The Weeping,” the latter of which was produced by Aaron Dessner of The National.

Those tracks are the first taste of more new music to come from Atwell this year, but today she is opening the new year with an acoustic live video for “The Weeping,” premiering with Under the Radar.

“The Weeping” hits particularly hard in Atwell’s live stripped-back arrangement, trading in Dessner’s production and lush studio instrumentation for a different sort of intimacy. Accompanied only by stately acoustic strums and David Pentecost’s spectral electric guitar accents, Atwell traces nostalgic childhood vignettes in an upswell of plaintive melodies. Her vocals sprawl and ache, giving her lyrics special resonance as she explores memories of her childhood bond with her sister一“I saw us as two halves/But two halves of a whole/And now if I can help it/I barely see her at all/I’m a walking open wound/And I can’t stop the weeping.”

Atwell explains of the the track, “I knew ‘The Weeping’ was in me, I just wasn’t sure when it would decide to come out. I only knew I was writing it when I got to the second verse and realised I finally had a vantage point. My younger sister is autistic, the kind of non-verbal autism that requires 24/7 care, and this track is mostly about what it was like to grow up with her. ‘The Weeping’ explores the parallels between me and my sister which is more interesting when you consider that I wrote it before I found out that I’m also autistic, this year - albeit, in a far less debilitating, disabling way.”

She says of the accompanying video “We filmed this live version of ‘The Weeping’ in Tuscany, where I’d been shooting several music videos. We were staying in a beautiful villa that was surrounded by farmland so we decided to take the opportunity to do a special, stripped-back performance - just me on classical guitar and David Pentecost on electric guitar and backing vocals. I wrote ‘The Weeping’ at sunset and the song references that, so I thought it would be a nice touch to shoot the session as the sun was going down over the Tuscan landscape. Shooting at sunset doesn’t give you much time, or room for error, but as it’s such a personal song I wanted the performance to feel raw so I was okay with that.”

Check out the song and video below, out everywhere now.