May the wind be always at your back chants Katy J Pearson over the opening seconds of her third solo record. Though lifted from the age-old Celtic Blessing, it is also disjoined, glitchy; transformed into a murky, modern good-luck charm for an electronic advent. Indicative of a shift in heart and sound, it fires the starting pistol for an album on which Pearson refuses to kick her heels; running red lights, resisting retrogrades, and exercising her own autonomy — in life, in love, and in the recording studio.

Following 2020’s Return and 2022’s Sound of the Morning, Someday, Now sees Pearson’s signature acoustic-led, sweetly-voiced singer-songwriter fare transmuted through the desk of electronic producer Nathan Jenkins, aka Bullion [whose previous credits include Carly Rae Jepsen, Ben Howard, Nilüfer Yanya and Avalon Emerson]. After a period of burnout, self-enforced exile from music-making, and solo travel, Pearson came back to her practice with clarity of mind and vision. “I knew exactly who I wanted to work with, I knew exactly who my session band were going to be, I knew where I wanted to record. It felt like I was finally calling the shots for myself, and that was so empowering”, she reflects. Having shied away from pop music since the souring of an early-career relationship with a major label (“it made me terrified of pop”), Someday, Now showcases the songwriter’s natural knack for a hook — presenting ten glistening tracks which are pop by nature, rather than design or demand. “I’ve found my way back to myself”, she summarises. It is a move both metaphorical and literal: Jenkins did not push Pearson to sing at the very top of her impressive vocal range, and helped her train herself out of an accidental American twang — instead making room for her to sing in her natural accent, cut soft by sandy Gloucestershire limestone. “Although Bullion was at the helm, I felt there with him, like we were co-producing. I felt so involved in my own music, which is ridiculous to have to say — but sadly, I think as a woman, it takes a long time to be confident in your assurance of what you’re trying to make; to trust yourself sonically in a studio setting.”

Conceived by Katy and shot on wet plate collodion by Kasia Wozniak, Someday, Now’s cover captures its artist armed with a heavy sword: a fitting, cherry-on-top visual metaphor for a woman who has “always been shy of taking up space” well and truly finding her power. Katy J Pearson’s third record, she asserts, “is my best work so far, and I’m not afraid to say that.” As she puts it on album closer ‘Sky’, Not on my knees / Look how I go / I’m an eagle / I am the sky. That yearned-for, dreamed-of someday is, it seems, happening right now.

Diva Harris, May 2024