Sydney-based singer/songwriter Ainsley Farrell has shared a new single from her upcoming second album with the release of “So Small,” which also arrives with a stunning music video. Making it the third preview that the burgeoning artist has shared this year alongside previous releases “Buffet” and “The Way Back.” Two back-to-back debuts in 2017 put Farrell on the map, first with the EP Dark Hours and then the full-length album Air & Sea, along with her penchant for transforming moments of vulnerability and distress into galvanizing ones.
On “So Small,” she finds herself whittling away at the memory of a panic attack that was severe enough to give Farrell an out-of-body experience she believed she’d never return from. Over the groan of earnest guitars and tumbling drums, she loosens her radiant vocals into the song’s dually melancholic and spirited soundscape. And although the echo of her energizing croons fills the horizon of “So Small,” there remains this inescapable sense of minuteness that envelops you with every listen.
Farrell funnels that anxiety of being at the mercy of a particularly traumatic panic attack into something far more soothingly cathartic. She’s never been one to shy away from the discomfortingly visceral details — like on “Buffet,” which recounts an incredibly creepy encounter with a man in the buffet line. But she also finds a way to transform even the most bitter of moments into stirring ones. “So Small” finds something ecstatic even in the midst of such a debilitating experience.
The music video for “So Small,” filmed with family and friends, sees Farrell placed against the backdrop of a collection of breathtaking California vistas. Wearing a red dress she appears at times as a small red figure against snow-blanketed mountains, arid rocky summits, and ebbing coastlines. Filmed like a grainy VHS home video it captures rather poignantly the way Farrell finds solace in a similar vein as her anxiety. Every shot of her small form against such vast landscapes drives home the idea that we are all at the mercy of far more benevolent (and beautiful) forces than just the ones created by our minds.
“The video was filmed around different parts of California — just on my last trip home,” Farrell told AU. “My brother, partner, and best friend helped me film it. The idea was to feel small amongst the backdrops and it sort of just worked out that we were able to start out in the mountains and end in the sea.”
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Words by Steven Ward
Watch the music video for Ainsley Farrell’s new single “So Small” below!
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