Glasgow singer/songwriter Raveloe is raw, unfiltered, and boldly exposed on ‘Exit Light,’ an emotionally charged, achingly vulnerable debut album full of indie folk warmth and indie rock charm.

for fans of Phoebe Bridgers, Skullcrusher, Katy Kirby

Stream: “Rustle in the Leaves” – Raveloe

When I left unsaid and morning bled, suspended in each cloud of breath, a yearning for a turning while you were in the throws alone too…

Raveloe’s debut album opens not with a shout, nor with a whisper, but with a lone note on a countertop.

“The air was thick over the motorway, suspended in a murky gray,” the singer/songwriter recalls, piecing together the day she ran away from home at sixteen. It’s an intimate and intense introduction – one that skips the hellos and pleasantries, and instead dives straight into the deep end as the artist dives into a former version of herself, unpacking what proved to be a defining experience not just of her adolescence, but of the adulthood that followed. “I thought I’d fled the worst of it all, but girl I was wrong. I ran from a quake to the pit of a sinkhole, now I’m reaching through invisible fibres, closer in this distance than I ever knew. We toil different soil but the dirt is the same.”

The ensuing record isn’t intentionally autobiographical, but it is uncompromisingly honest and undeniably raw in a way that makes Raveloe’s stories feel personal and familiar – as if they are, in fact, our own. Her imagery is vivid and poetic, her delivery confessional and conversational, her music impassioned and unapologetic. The Scottish artist is boldly exposed on Exit Light, an emotionally charged, achingly vulnerable debut full of indie folk warmth and indie rock charm.

It’s dynamic and delicate, heavy and light, heartfelt and human the whole way through. We do contain multitudes, after all.

I thought I’d fled the worst of it all
but girl I was wrong
I ran from a quake to the pit of a sinkhole
now I’m reaching through invisible fibres
closer in this distance than I ever knew
we toil different soil
but the dirt is the same
it’s there on your face, yeah
you wear it the same
the same, the same
yeah you know it by a different name

now when I walk into the unknown
I find it reassuring
I survived some time ago
gathered my strength
made it home

– “Countertop,” Raveloe

Released November 11, 2023 via Olive Grove Records, Exit Light is a bold and breathtaking entrance; one that finds Glaswegian artist Raveloe spreading her wings and flying, channeling coming-of-age stories and reflections on duality, loss, love, and nature into breathtaking indie rock and indie folk sound. Arriving just two years after her debut EP Notes and Dreams introduced both Scotland and the wider world to Raveloe, her first full-length record finds singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Kim Grant dwelling in a soul-stirring space of inward and outer connection.

While she cites folks like Big Thief, Frightened Rabbit, and Waxahatchee (among others) as some of her musical inspirations, the artist name Raveloe itself comes from the weaver in George Eliot’s 1861 novel, Silas Marner. For Grant, Raveloe is not so much a mask, as it is a vessel of magical-realism; her stories are indelibly her own, and yet the project itself is larger than the sum of its parts (ie., the human at the heart of the project).

“There are many stories running through it, tied together with some common threads,” Grant says of the record. “Stories I stumbled across like that of Margaret Gallagher, or from my own experience or observations, learnings about nature and the parallels and connections with being human and relationships. There’s a lot about love, musings on the nature of time and existence. There’s a lot of duality in the stories, too. The opener details my experience of leaving home at 16 and the rest of the record in parts explores learning to break the pattern of ‘running away’ and learning to sit with oneself or with whatever may arise.”

“I knew I wanted to record a lot of the foundation of the songs as a live band with me, Paul Kelly and Peter Kelly (bass and drums) playing together in the studio to capture that organic energy and dynamic between us and then build around that. I hoped to emerge myself into the sonic possibilities of the worlds my songs could inhabit, with an open mind and allow space for experimenting and improvisation. We stayed true to that vision in our approach and some of my favourite moments are from experimenting there and then as we recorded.”

My notion of my artistry is ever-shifting, but the album certainly captured a moment in time where I gave it all I could.

She describes Exit Light as shifting, holding, and stirring.

The title is a line from the sixth track, “Ghost Beach”: ‘I don’t want to run, keep seeing the exit light above every turn.’

“I felt it sets up an exploration of the duality of the exit light – it can feel like moving towards safety or like fleeing instead of rooting yourself and allowing yourself to grow from whatever you are running away from, by sitting with it, as a thread throughout the album is about running away/learning to stay it seemed to fit.”

on the edge of your bed
the skylines shifted gold kisses red
though I’m met with unfamiliar scenes
it feels like fragments of forgotten dreams

now I watch like the crow collecting
old lessons that glisten as new
can I watch the moment that’s passing
without being divided in two
and if I set myself at this table
will I be devoured by you

– “Old Lessons,” Raveloe

Highlights abound on the journey from the achingly intimate and visceral opener “Countertop” to the spirited exhale “Keep Count,” a cathartic finale that sends us off with a breath of fresh air.

“‘Keep Count’ is special to me,” Grant says fondly, “because it really captured this raw visceral energy in everyone’s performance through to the production, and there was this beautiful space for improv from all who contributed to this track and observing Jill O’Sullivan improvise on violin over it was a transcendent experience!”

“‘Ghost Beach’ is another dear to my heart, that grew into a beautiful space in the studio,” she smiles. A gentle, soul-stirring four-minute dreamscape, “Ghost Beach” captures achingly familiar feelings of isolation and loneliness through tender melodies and moving lyrics that upend our singular understandings of these experiences, reminding us that what once flourished can again, if conditions allow.

“It was a joy to be joined by Jason Riddell’s beautiful vocal accompaniment and piano playing as well as Simon Liddell’s (Frightened Rabbit, Poster Paints) bed of harmonium and Peter Kelly’s muted drums and Paul Gallaghers beautifully sensitive production,” Grant adds.

Grant hopes listeners take away some kind of connection “with themselves, the songs, a thought, a dream, their surroundings.”

“It was a journey creating it and since it was my debut album, I’ve taken a lot from the process as far as learning,” she shares. “There was a lot of learning along the way, I feel excited to do it all again knowing what I know but also knowing there’s so much more to know, and staying open in the process will allow that to happen. I feel grateful for everyone involved and I’m feeling a connection to all those who are listening and sharing their experiences with the songs, it’s a really lovely part of putting it out. I feel immediately drawn to want to get buried back into recording as soon as I can too.”

Experience the full record via our below stream, and peek inside Raveloe’s Exit Light with Atwood Magazine as Kim Grant goes track-by-track through the music and lyrics of her debut album!

the sun won’t come that high
over the tenements for a long while
so I drag my chair where the branches lay bare
with all the hardy kinds
and the sweet pines
and the skin that waits exposure

whats done departs like dust
scatters into matter
reassemble if you must but then is born another
dimension of events taking you
further than what was truly there

like an arrow in the night
not directionless but out of sight
I called you by name
thought I saw you again
in a crowded sea in which I sunk to be
digging ever deeper
the labour of the lost
lands lain out before me as constellations
clearer in the distance

– “The Chair Is Nowhere,” Raveloe

— —

:: stream/purchase Exit Light here ::

:: connect with Raveloe here ::

Stream: ‘Exit Light’ – Raveloe

:: Inside Exit Light ::

— —

Countertop

This song documents leaving home and the guilt of leaving my younger brother with the acknowledgement of becoming stronger from moving through difficulties and learning from them.

The Chair Is Nowhere

This is about trying not to get stuck in the past, to be instead in the moment and accept what is, acknowledging the losses and the beauty, or the duality that they can both be present. It’s an exploration of time and memory.

Rustle in the Leaves

Living with anxiety and acknowledging the brain is hardwired to be anxious as a defense mechanism. It’s about taking space in the magic and beauty of my surroundings to shift my perspective and learning to live with anxiety by acknowledging it, and coming to a place of acceptance.

Jeans Hill

This song is also about learning to let go, accepting change, allowing space in your relationships for each of you to grow and change. It’s about accepting that pain will shift just as everything else will and there’s beauty amidst it all.

Old Lessons

This song deals with grief, it features my gran’s blue silk scarf she gave me which I hold very dear. It also explores a renewed sense of love, relearning old lessons, and explores a little of the question of free will.

Ghost Beach

The ghost represents isolation and loneliness, and how in different settings the unexpected can be easily missed, also when your “frame” is skewed by bias/sadness/fear. What once flourished can again if conditions allow. I was inspired in part by learning about how trees don’t cut off dead trees from nutrients so they can still transmit vital information through their root networks to new trees. It explores allowing space for transformation in relationships, or yourself or your environment.

Clouds Are Release

This was inspired by learning about the life of Margaret Gallagher who lives off-grid in a small village in Northern Ireland. By connecting with nature and its cycles it objectively allows me to see my sadness; like clouds that will clear, reform, reshape. Acknowledging past traumas helps navigate future paths. I was also going through therapy at the time and I wanted to capture that process so there’s a duality of stories present in this telling.

In the crescent

It starts with footsteps I recorded on my phone of me walking in the snow a couple of years ago in hope to use them one day for this song as I first got inspiration for the song walking to my local shop in the snow under a crescent moon. Looking up at the moon and the stars I remembered another night under the stars on the isle of Arran. It’s about love and loss and cycles…and the moon, of course.

Purple Loose Strife

This song deals with depression/anxious thoughts and how to enable them to pass rather than take hold, it’s about observing and not running away. It was inspired by a walk to Queens Park (a green space on the south side of Glasgow) when I was having a difficult day.

Passing Place

Inspired by a walk around Loch Lomond, we passed a sign saying passing place. I thought of creating that passing place inside oneself acknowledging what comes and letting certain things go.

Keep Count

Inspired by a period of doubt over my creative output, I had the urge to write but was being blocked by doubt and wrestling with spending too much energy and time working to make ends meet in minimum wage jobs but feeling creatively starved as a result. Jason left my guitar in a different tuning and I picked it up and it created this break-through moment and the chords and melody came to me.

It explored the power of acknowledging fears rather than pushing them away, suppressing only leads to blockages and gives the fear power over you, it also explores letting go, giving myself to the moment allowed me to access the potential of gathering up the song.

— —

:: stream/purchase Exit Light here ::

:: connect with Raveloe here ::

— — — —

Connect to Raveloe on
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram

Discover new music on Atwood Magazine

 © 2024

Exit Light

an album by Raveloe