Charm Unawakened Souls

Julia Holter “Sea Calls Me Home”

“Sea Calls Me Home” is a song about “getting away from it all” and finding some peace and clarity on the water, but it’s also not quite as simple as that. There’s a strange, ambiguous feeling to the music – pleasant, but still uncertain. For one thing, the character says she can’t swim. That’s an issue, maybe. But the real emotional punch of the song is when she sings “it’s lucidity, so clear!,” and then there’s just this feeling of “OK, and then what?” It can be so hard to know what to do with a nice feeling. The second verse has her pledging to “forget all the rules I’ve known,” but she’s still grounding that in some practical details. You can escape places, but maybe not the mundane trappings of life.

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