Q&A: Rachel Bobbitt Finds Herself in the Tides on ‘Swimming Towards the Sand’
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY KIMBERLY KAPELA ☆
Photo Credit: Ebru Yildiz
“THE OCEAN DOES NOT CARE ABOUT YOU AT ALL” — declares Rachel Bobbitt. “That’s what makes something truly awesome. It could and will exist, with or without you.”
The sentiment holds the weight of a mantra that holds the core of her debut full-length LP, Swimming Towards the Sand. Bobbitt surrenders to that vastness, letting the ocean’s indifference mirror both the fragility and resilience of being alive. Raised in the windswept Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia, she returns to the landscapes that shaped her, revisiting the memories, griefs, and dreams that have ebbed and flowed throughout her life. The result is a record that is immersed in reflection, self-discovery and finding the meaning of home.
For Bobbitt, the ocean is an extension of her internal world. Its presence throughout Swimming Towards the Sand is both haunting and grounding, a reminder of nature’s apathy and beauty.
“Having the water be so consistent and impartial to you, and terrifying and beautiful,” Bobbitt says. “It is such a strong presence for me.”
Recorded in LA with producer Chris Coady, the album juxtaposes the coastal expanse of Nova Scotia and the quiet of Glendale’s Verdugo Mountains. The album builds naturally on the sonic and emotional groundwork of her previous EPs — The Ceiling Could Collapse (2022) and The Half We Still Have (2023) — but this time, Bobbitt moves with greater clarity and purpose.
Side A chronicles a series of losses Bobbitt has endured in recent years. The dreamy, wistful “Hush” is borne from a demo comprised solely of Bobbitt’s vocal layers, placed upon a bedrock of a drum machine and keys, capturing the ache of a love story that never quite was. A whimsical classical guitar guides the ethereal “Light.” Indie-rock appears on “Hands Hands Hands.” The first half closes out with “Remember,” a mellow, mournful synth line accompanying Bobbitt’s ode to her mother and grandmother.
Side B begins with “Furthest Limb,” Bobbitt’s biggest vocal swing, pushing to her highest notes in between guitar hits. “I Want It All” is a mid-tempo exploration of Bobbitt’s mental health, and the dark and moody “Life By The Marsh” is another reflection of feeling low. “Ask Again” is awash in the feeling of self-doubt and OCD-induced looping thoughts. The final pair — “Deer on the Freeway” and “Sweetest Heart” — embrace the thrill of new infatuation.
Like the ocean transforming discarded bottles into sea glass, Bobbitt’s songs turn her personal fragments into something tangible and luminous.
If her earlier releases hinted at Bobbitt’s potential, Swimming Towards the Sand delivers on it fully. It’s her most cohesive and expansive work to date, manifesting a fully realized vision of who she has become. The tide, as ever, moves forward. And in that motion, Rachel Bobbitt finds renewal in Swimming Towards the Sand.
LUNA: Thank you for talking to Luna. Our readers would love to get to know you and your music more. For any readers who aren’t familiar with you yet, what inspires your artistic style and sound?
RACHEL: There's quite a few people that inspire me. I think during this era of my music, a big inspiration is Imogen Heap. I just feel like her vocal harmonies and production are really inspiring to me, as well as Caroline Polachek for that same reason. I think in general, my music tends to lean a little bit less pop or a little less energetic and a little more into folk, indie zones. I admire them so much as vocalists. I love their harmony arranging and the way that their vocals take the forefront, so right now that world is a big inspiration for me.
LUNA: What kind of atmosphere or emotional space do you aim to create for your listeners?
RACHEL: I definitely want every song to feel like a world that you can step into. I obviously wanted the album itself to feel like a cohesive piece of work, but I think the way that I tend to operate is much more song by song, and so I really want to create a space in each song. Maybe that space is one that's really sparse and really barren, but I want to further that idea as much as I can, or maybe I want it to sound really lush and really layered. I think it just is more like a song by song creation for me. I think especially with this album, trying to find the core of each song and create that world as deeply as I could, was more the intention as opposed to zooming out the album as a project, it was more like, how do we create each song to make it feel very distinct?
LUNA: You have released your debut record Swimming Towards the Sand and a huge congratulations is in order! The ocean recurs throughout the record as both a literal and symbolic force. You’ve said, “The ocean does not care about you at all.” What draws you to it as such a central motif?
RACHEL: I grew up in Nova Scotia, so five minutes driving any direction you're going to be at the water. I think the water there especially, and the types of beaches we have, they're quite rugged and still very untapped and still very desolate in a lot of ways. When I'm at home and I'm going to the beaches, it's almost always a bit of an uncomfortable experience. It's not necessarily a sandy beach with warm waters. It's rocky and jagged. We have the highest tides in the world, the water is quite rough.
It feels very animalistic in a lot of ways. I think that lack of care for us as humans by the ocean was inherently inspiring to me. I think it's just truly awesome in the true sense of the word. I also feel like the process of creating an album or any work of art where you're ruminating and turning over the same thoughts over and over again has that same sort of cyclical feeling that is the ocean, which is the return of the tides, and everything works in cycles. It's the same way that shorelines get chipped away over time, or glass becomes sea glass. It's a really slow, meticulous process, and so that mirroring felt really resonant in the creation of the album.
LUNA: You describe the album as a return to both home and self. What does “home” mean to you now compared to when you first began writing music in Nova Scotia?
RACHEL: Home has definitely shifted for me. Similar to a lot of young people growing up in a small town, when I was 17, I wanted to get out of here. And I did. I left pretty immediately. Directly after high school, I moved to Toronto, and I spent a good three years living in Toronto and feeling really detached from my sense of home. I still spent a lot of time being homesick and waiting for my trips back to Nova Scotia and feeling like I couldn't adjust to Toronto. I think in that time now, I've been in Toronto for close to eight years, and I've really created a secondary home here, and I feel just as happy here as I do when I'm visiting my home in Nova Scotia, which, at a time, would have been a crazy thought to me. I think now my sort of internal sense of home is in Toronto, where my community is, where my friends are, where my people are, where music and creativity and it feels very alive, that's my home. Nova Scotia is where my family is, so that's my home in that way. Then the physical landscape is there, but it's not my home when I think of my life moving forward and being full, I don't think of Nova Scotia, but when I think of my comfort and my return, it's always Nova Scotia.
LUNA: Can you share more about your creative partnership with Chris Coady and how it influenced the overall sound and direction of the album?
RACHEL: Chris is amazing. I definitely was shocked and over the moon to be able to work with him. It's just so clear that he has a really insane knowledge about all things technical. I think watching him, even sort of engineer and mix as we recorded, was amazing. He has a great way of being the steady voice of reason. I think that is such an important job for a producer when you're recording a project, especially where I can get a little bit perfectionist with certain things to a point where it's not beneficial anymore. It was the kind of relationship where I would maybe be a little bit in my head and say, ‘let's go back in and get 20 more takes.’ He would say, ‘no, we've got it.’ He was a really great force in the process, and has access to these amazing synths, and his ear for tone is just amazing. It was really great, and honestly a dream of mine to have my songs and my ideas funneled and refined through his lens and his experience.
LUNA: Do you have a personal favorite song on the album — one that feels closest to your heart or most revealing of who Rachel Bobbitt is right now?
RACHEL: That's a really nice question. I think it's definitely shifting, but I think right now “Remember?” is the song that feels the most reflective of me. Lyrically, it feels confessional, but also a little bit dream based and surreal, which is the direction I'm moving more lyrically, to be a little less literal and a little more word-painty and ambient. I think also in terms of the instrumentation, a lot of synth drones and fuzzy guitars, but up close vocals, that sort of approach is still feeling really resonant to me, so that song feels quite reflective.
LUNA: Did you take any creative risks or experiment with new approaches on Swimming Towards the Sand compared to The Half We Still Have? What felt different this time around in how you expressed yourself?
RACHEL: I think working with Chris definitely introduced me to a lot of new ways of recording and approaching a project, especially vocally. In the past, there's been more of a reserved vocal approach to my projects, and I've seen the voice as more of a way to carry the words of the song, rather than an instrument itself. But I think with this project, I really led into it with the intention of having my voice be an instrument, and the melodies being very important, and the vocals being up front, being really important.
And working with Chris, he had a really specific way of recording vocals. His intention was me going to stand for the vocal takes, and we're going to do every song, front to back. We're not going to take sections. I think that was super different for me. I had previously really only done vocals sitting down, sometimes I'd even go line by line just to get really perfectionist with it. I think Chris’ approach, although it was really challenging for me and pushed me out of my comfort zone, because I think it did bring out a lot of emotion and it felt like the stakes were a little bit higher, so the sound was a little bit more expressive.
LUNA: What is fueling your fire right now that’s pushing you into this new chapter in your career?
RACHEL: I think right now, playing a live set that I'm really excited by has been driving me. We had our album release show a couple weeks ago, and we had some background singers and a synth player and a full band, and that was really exciting. I'm doing a small tour with my guitarist and producer that I work with a lot, named Justice Der, and we're doing duo sets and that's going to be really exciting as well. I think all the different iterations that the album can take in terms of instrumentation and how we can adapt it to fit different situations is really exciting to me. I think just more playing live and hopefully more touring as well is my main driving force.
LUNA: How did you celebrate the album release?
RACHEL: We had a show here in Toronto. We got new merch and some vinyl, which was really exciting. It's the first time my music has ever been on vinyl, so that was definitely a really big moment. My parents flew in from Nova Scotia, and that was super nice. My sister sang background vocals, and a friend also sang. It felt very community-based, like a really wholesome and exciting night. I just had some nice wine and went to bed.
LUNA: How are you feeling in this current era of your career and what does the rest of the year look like for you that you would like to share with Luna?
RACHEL: I'm feeling very excited. I think a lot of musicians understand the feeling of spending a really long time on an album, and then the release can take a while. For me now, these songs are a couple of years old. I'm definitely feeling ready and excited that it's released and it's out in the world, and I can mentally move on from it. I think that sometimes when a project is done without it being released, it can still feel a bit like it's looming, so it feels really exciting to have it out and wash my hands of it. I’m entering a bit of a writing phase right now, so focusing a lot on that, which for me, looks like a lot of reading and trying to find inspiration from other musicians and other artists and mining their amazing work to try to see if anything inspires me. And then a lot of teaching and some performing.
