On her latest release, "Underwater," Lucy James immerses listeners in the silent tension of emotional disconnection, making it feel like a warm embrace. James returns with a song that doesn't chase the mainstream but lopes to its beat. Here she's accompanied by the guitarist Connor Botherway-Hill, whose gentle playing becomes a second voice in the exchange, understated yet soulful and rich in atmosphere. "Underwater" engulfs you with its slow-burning, almost tentative in its tempo, like someone searching for the words to express what he's feeling and losing his way mid-sentence.
James leads us into the cloudy, mysterious world of what it feels like to float in your independence. It's the equivalent of watching someone through frosted glass. James, whose vocal delivery is reflective and intimate, sings as though contemplating words left unspoken. By contrast, Botherway-Hill's guitar is a memory fluid, flickering and echoing in all the right spaces. The two musicians get each other's timing, and the song has a lovely pulse that stays in the air past the final chord. "Underwater" has nothing to do with making a splash and everything to do with just being submerged. It takes up that grey, largely wordless zone in which feelings slip away not in dramatic outbursts but in quiet withdrawal.
And that is where the glory of Lucy James lies, not in saying too much, but in the emotional granules that we find between the words. James is also demonstrating that emotional nuance is still relevant in contemporary music. "Underwater" beckons you to sink in, to feel, and perhaps to find a little of your own story drifting among the notes. If you've ever been a little bit numb, a little out of reach, this is your song. Lucy James will have something to show you what that sounds like, and you'll be glad she does.