Skip to main content

Maverick Ad

Home

Main navigation

  • Home
  • Cover Stories
  • Features
  • News
  • Reviews
  • Cashbox Legacy Awards
  • Past Covers
  • Weekly Archive
Janel Rae Explores Inner & Outer Wreckage with Radically Honest “Sometimes”

Breadcrumb

  • Home
  • Janel Rae Explores Inner & Outer Wreckage with Radically Honest “Sometimes”
Janel Rae Explores Inner & Outer Wreckage with Radically Honest “Sometimes”
Fri Jun 03, 2022
Cashbox Canada

Sometimes – no, always – when we neglect crucial parts of ourselves, they inevitably come rushing out at some point. Those neglected traits and emotions are what Canadian singer-songwriter Janel Rae covers in her piano-studded, sweeping soundscape of a single “Sometimes” – check it out on YouTube here:

Mournful, introspective, and ultimately cathartic, “Sometimes” begins with the sound of broken glass being swept up off the floor. The sound of glass will become crucial throughout the song’s cascading narrative. ‘I spilled a jar of jam on the carpet/ And I can’t remove the stain/ Now when I look down, it reminds me of the fight we had that day,’ Rae sings.

The perspective then shifts from the narrator alone in her home to the narrator in relationship with someone else. We hear a distorted voice abstractly representative of one’s greater shadow in counter-harmony to Rae’s honeyed vocals. ‘I suppressed you for four years now/And it’s making me anxious,’ she confesses in song, explaining that it’s “what happens to the voice as it’s being suppressed and on the verge of breaking through.”

Suddenly, the song builds to a crescendo. ‘Sometimes I want to scream so loud/ People start running/ Punching beds to get it out/ Just to feel something.’ A glass breaks against a wall, and Rae repeats the line about wanting to scream so loud. The song slows again and meanders from solitude to relationship to solitude until the narrator is alone again, and we hear the sound from the beginning, the sweeping up of glass.

Written in one improvisatory gust, “Sometimes” is based on Rae’s personal experience of getting in touch with her own emotions after many years of denial. “Growing up I found myself playing the peace-keeper, the listener, too busy to engage with the other sides of myself,” she recalls. “When I moved from Kelowna to Toronto, to go to college, I met my anger for the first time and I called this period of my life ‘my wreckage’… And I enjoyed it.”

It’s a song that’s much greater than the sum of its parts. “’Sometimes’ is more than a broken love song,” Rae reveals. “It’s a mourning for my younger self, and a claiming of one’s discovered internal landscape.” Which is reflected in the wide array, as well as the cinematic nature, of the sounds that appear in “Sometimes.”

“I wanted to twist the voices, smash the glass, and bend the instruments to capture a body of anxiety hovering in the singer’s shadow,” Rae explains. “The chorus comes in with a field of voices to join the singer: these feelings are not rare; these thoughts do not live in one life. I wanted anyone to feel like they could turn this on and yell these words.”

Born in Kelowna, BC, Janel Rae has been performing and creating music since she was five. Now pursuing her passions in Toronto, after graduating with a Governor General’s award from The Randolph College for Performing Arts, Janel has released her second album, Dinner With Stranger, and continues directing music videos, acting in indie films, and teaching voice and song creation.

For more on Janel Rae visit:
janelrae.com/
instagram.com/janel_rae_filipiak/
facebook.com/Janel-Rae-102942671742833/?ref=pages_you_manage

Reviews
Album
Janel Rae
Month: Oct 2020
Malika Tirolien MALIKA TIROLIEN Delivers Calls to “RISE” With New Single
Wallish Alt.Singer/Songwriter WALLISH Says This is “The Last Time” in New Single
Mayne Champagne From Jail To The Top Of The Charts, Mayne Champagne Releases New Single“Joanna”
Azym Pop-R&B Artist, Dancer & Actor Azym Sings of a Love Best…
Ben de la Cour Nashville’s Ben de la Cour Releases Latest Americanoir Album Shadow Land…
Eclecticus Take Me Away Says Rock Duo Eclecticus with the Release of Fourth Album
Quarantine Mixtape - Hollow River Hollow River Releases Protest Concept EP & Video Trilogy, '…
Ordinary Lights - Imperial Ashes Imperial Ashes Leverage Master’s Thesis on Wealth Inequality for “…
Jamhaitian Award-Winning New World Artist Jamhaitian Says “You So Fly” with New Single…
Kevin B Klein Nashville's Kevin B Klein Is All About Making His Own Choices in…
Murray Atkinson The Odds' MURRAY ATKINSON Releases “#Grinding” From Instrumental EPM…
Canadian Matriarch of the Blues Dalannah Takes a “Look Ahead” with Powerful Single Canadian Matriarch of the Blues Dalannah Takes a “Look Ahead” with Powerful…
The Thick THE THICK Band O' Brothers Of Funk Rock; Release Debut Full-…
Revive The Rose Niagara Rockers Revive The Rose Already Miss Hockey in New Single, “Bar Down…
Keith Phelps Keith Phelps’ “Harlins Renaissance” Featured on Oscar-winning Documentary…

Pagination

  • First page « First
  • Previous page ‹ Previous
  • …
  • Page 23
  • Page 24
  • Page 25
  • Page 26
  • Current page 27
  • Page 28
  • Page 29
  • Page 30
  • Page 31
  • …
  • Next page Next ›
  • Last page Last »

CEO/PUBLISHER/EDITOR IN CHIEF
SANDY GRAHAM

email:sandygrahamemg@gmail.com 

Canadian Journalists:

Contributing Journalist - Canada and Global
Don Graham
email: dongrahamwriter@gmail.com

Contributing Journalist - Canada and Global
Lisa Hartt
email: lisahartt87@hotmail.com

Contributing Journalist - Canada 
Michael Williams
email: greydread@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

International Journalists:

Contributing Journalist - Sweden
Malin Osth
email: malin@musicdays.se

Contributing Journalist - Sweden
Jonas Tancred
email: jonas@musicdays.se

Contributing Journalist - USA
Rob Durkee 
email: rockster2746@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

Web Developer/Technical Support
Chris Wardman

email: info@chriswardman.com
website: chriswardman.com

Cashbox Cover Design and Graphic Artist
Jain McMillan

email: jainmcmillan@gmail.com

Contributing Photographer 
Tracey Savein - South Paw Productions
southpawproductions@rogers.com

 

 

 

Footer menu

  • Home
  • Features
  • News
  • Reviews
  • Cashbox Archive
  • Issue Archive
  • Past Covers