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Mar 21, 2023 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Alec Bowman Clarke

Next month, singer/songwriter Josienne Clarke is set to debut her new LP, Onliness (songs of solitude and singularity). The record is her latest LP released via her own label, following 2021’s A Small Unknowable Thing and her 2022 effort, Now & Then. Those records opened a new chapter in Clarke’s songwriting, starting over as an independent artist after spending over a decade embroiled in the industry structure.

Her latest album was originally conceived as a career retrospective of sorts, but quickly became a way for Clarke to rediscover and reclaim her her back catalog. She found fan favorites and forgotten gems then re-recorded them and reimagined them to stand with an expanded sonic palette. Ahead of the record’s release, she has shared her lead singles, “The Birds” and “The Tangled Tree,” and today she’s back with her latest single, “Words Were Never The Answer,” premiering with Under the Radar.

“Words Were Never The Answer” acts as the record’s closer and sole brand-new song, and finds Clarke conjuring a bittersweet folk reverie. Guided only by sparse guitar arpeggios, Clarke delivers a stark and intimate performance, steeping in longing and weathered beauty. Her lyrics meditate on words and meaning, considering the purpose for her own art一“Words were never the answer / Resplendently recondite they are / It’s just a way to tolerate the universal pain of simply living / A smouldering sun over a swelling sea.” Clarke evokes a perfect marriage of warmth and melancholy, finding beauty in her music, even with the knowledge of how little her words hold.

Clarke describes the track as “the sum total of everything that I’ve learned. Nothing can be achieved with just melody and sentences, however well you structure them,” she explains. “You only ever make pretty shapes with pain and the best you can hope for is that it resonates somehow with someone else in some way. It’s not intended to be as bleak as that sounds; I’m making light of the foolish grandiosity that drives artistic endeavor and–to be honest–in an industry that’s often so hostile a landscape to the artist we need that kind of motivation, as ‘meaninglessly lovely’ as it is.”

Below you can check out the track and its accompanying video, directed by Alec Bowman Clarke. Onliness (songs of solitude and singularity) is out April 14th via Corduroy Punk Records.