Naarm(Melbourne) based artist Sidney releases her latest EP what if it ends this week.
Created alongside collaborators including Grant Konemann, Ben Oldland, Jim Alxndr (Carly Rae Jepsen), Ned Houston (Guy Sebastian), Able Joseph, Joey Astera, and Karina Savage (Glades), what if it ends? blends warm indie-pop production with confessional songwriting – ensuring Sidney finds company among storytellers like Holly Humberstone, Gracie Abrams, and Lizzy McAlpine.
I was really taken by single Long Haul so I was very keen to give this release a listen. The EP encapsulates a similar theme of relationships not being quite as perfect as they seem. Written in the year leading up to the end of Sidney’s engagement it perfectly captures that journey of life seemingly carrying on as normal while your world is quietly cracking underneath.
Sidney shares, “This EP is built around one question: what if it ends? I’ve asked the question time and time again, with a different meaning each time; over coffee with friends, crying into my mother’s arms, or journalling about an exciting new chapter; it’s been there throughout. Every song in this EP captures the tension of the hopeful optimism and fearful dread I have carried around with me when navigating my twenties. What if the ending is actually where the best part of my life begins? That duality runs through every song.”
Opening with Sliding Doors, a somewhat ideallic view of the future gives us an insight into Sidney’s hopes and dreams, which makes the rest of the EP all the more poignant.
I enjoyed cinematic track golden boy. The deeply self-reflective track really put me in that place after an argument where your anxieties are going crazy and you’re convincing yourself it’s over and you hate each other. But then you start wishing you can just move past this or through it (can we just make out ‘til it’s over? Can we just keep holding our breath?”). One line of this song really hit me “I’m both anxious and avoidant. What a winning combination” and this song sums up how it feels to be both of those things perfectly.
You can always tell if I’ve really connected with a record by the way if I start quoting lyrics at you. Admittedly I’m less likely to do this if the story doesn’t resonate with me personally, even if I enjoyed the album, but if I’m giving you lyrical details, it’s a good sign and I really felt that connection with what if it ends and Sidney’s beautiful storytelling.
I actually cried listening to the difference. It portrays the aching for human connection so beautifully, and that desire to help, even when we’re perhaps not at our best. The song reflects on Sidney’s father’s later in life depression diagnosis – it’s heavy, intimate and unfiltered (the vocals remain the untouched demo).
If sliding doors is looking forward anything is looking backwards to the start of the relationship and the invincibility you feel where nothing could possibly go wrong. It could almost be the EP closer, a wistful aspiration that everything could just stay as it once was. However, what if it ends? is an even more perfect close to this journey. You can hear the acceptance “this life doesn’t know me, the way that it did once” amid the sadness “I try to hide that it’s all sinking in” again it beautifully maps those emotions of “I don’t want to start again” vs “I know this isn’t for me”. It’s something Sidney does stunningly well on this EP as she lays bare the complexities of relationships. I criticised an album earlier this year for its one dimensional look at a break up, and Sidney’s what if it ends is the exact opposite of that. She’s given time and space to a multitude of feelings and she’s combined them into a wonderful record.