Sarah Kinsley is Ascending with Her New EP, ‘Ascension’.
Written by Sammy Wrogé
“We are ascending to this place where everything is alive. Where love is bright and fruitful and where memories last forever.” – Sarah Kinsley
Sarah Kinsley is a singer/songwriter and self-producer based in New York City who recently released her new — entirely self-produced — EP, Ascension.
Diamond. Lucid. Blue.
Ascension is a celebration of all the memories we hold dear in this life and an expression of unfiltered joy. With Sarah’s earlier memories with music based in classical music and a more disciplined sound between piano and violin, she can’t seem to escape the themes of classical music through her new EP. She also maintains a strong association with piano and strings in her sound, but pulls away from the discipline to push for expression and freeness towards the theme of ascending to a place that holds a lot of memory.
To Sarah, the uncertainty of where to go or what is meant to be draws her in. She feels captivated with wonder and weirdness that allows her to be experimental, such as through her song, “Black Horse”, that contains two sides to it. The song is a play on duality: sanity and insanity, calm and chaos, indoor and outdoor. With self-production, comes self-doubt, but Sarah feels she has grown exponentially by taking the reins on this project.
Time is something Sarah feels, but does not fully understand. She explains how she made these songs (from her EP) to understand the largeness of it. “Each track deals with the illusion of getting older in a nuanced and different way,” says Sarah. According to Sarah, there is silliness and sarcasm and irony in each track, just like in “Oh No Darling!” with its ironic way of saying, “’Oh darling you’re so stupid, you’re doing all these things.’” Sarah collects time as a measure of who she is in relation to all the things she does.
This idea is seen in her song, “The King,” which also created a trend on TikTok of videos showcasing nostalgia. All things described in the song were how she felt alive. The meaning of the song was tethered to experiences she talked about. In other words, the song was lyrically specific because she was actually doing those things she sang about. “I stayed up doing all those things before I turned 20 and before I had written that song. That was what being alive felt like
to me. Just being very free and giving myself a lot of permission to be childish and just silly.” Allowing oneself to be “stupid” and be a bit of a goof has carried into Ascension.
Sarah plans to disappear for a little bit and be one with the earth to write. She feels creativity in spurts of energy, or in waves. “Writer’s block is actually a really nice sign from the universe to go out and exist in a slightly different way”. When Sarah writes, she says everything is about breathing in or ingesting or taking things in and grabbing things that are in front of you. On the other hand, she says with writer’s block, you can observe and let things exist around you and appear to you, and is more beautiful in a weird way.
While Sarah disappears, listen to Ascension here!