“You called yourself broken, but that’s just what people are, that’s how the light gets in,” sings Bess Atwell in the opening moments of Light Sleeper, before gentle hums of strings and shuffling snares make way for the Brighton singer’s voice at full pelt, singing with a newfound rawness. Though ‘Everyone Who's Not In Love With You Is Wrong ’initially feels as though it could be written to lift somebody else up, the Sam that fears being forgotten is actually a stand-in for whatever her listener needs. Unlike many of her other songs, it’s not entirely autobiographical, but paves the way for a record which digs deep into the core of its author.  

“Light Sleeper is about the willingness to feel,” the Brighton singer-songwriter explains. “Somewhere along the line I had become very afraid of feeling.”

A huge part of this exploratory new era was Aaron Dessner, who produced

Light Sleeper. “He was always my pipe dream producer,” she smiles – The National founder has always been at the top of her fantasy wishlist. “Always with brackets after it: obviously not going to happen, just saying this is the guy,” she laughs.  

His isolated cabin studio Long Pond, in Hudson Valley, was once her desktop background, but she never thought she would end up star-gazing on its veranda and noodling away on the same instruments used by her heroes, not to mention a certain pop star…

“When he started working with Taylor Swift… I mean, I love her,” she cautions. “But I remember texting my friends ‘Well, there goes any chance I ever had of working with him!’”

Even the small matter of recording evermore and folklore with Swift didn’t stop Dessner from contacting Atwell through Instagram and agreeing to produce Light Sleeper. The pair spent five days in the Hudson Valley studio before fine-tuning the record’s rich, shimmering sound from different sides of the Atlantic. “On the first day of recording, we woke up to a blanket of snow everywhere. As if it could get more magical!”  

The sense of trust between the pair was vital to Light Sleeper’s emotive core.

Dessner prefers to work at a rapid pace, with fewer takes. He encouraged Atwell to embrace the imperfections of these rawer moments, and the emotions the cracks evoke; in the process Atwell unlocked a new, impassioned side to her vocals.

“If you're not really listening, it's sad music. But if you're really listening, it's about acceptance, and the joy of expressing yourself. It can feel really good to express things that are hard, or painful.”

The immediate trust between the pair clicked the moment Atwell walked through the doors of the iconic recording space; Dessner showed her around and then promptly left her alone to play on the many instruments at the heart of her favourite The National songs. As Atwell puts it, they seemed to speak the same musical language. “I trust his ear and I knew we had the same vision” she says.  

Since the release of ‘Already, Always’ Atwell has been through a number of personal transformations. During the period in which she wrote ‘Light Sleeper’ Atwell was in the process of tapering off antidepressants, after “years of avoiding it”. She wasn’t just apprehensive about the emotions that would surface; she feared the rush of uncertainty that came with it.  

“It’s the fear of fear that's worth fearing” she says, building upon a belief at the heart of this record; that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.  

Throughout the writing process, Atwell also found herself reflecting on her upbringing, and various experiences– both joyous and difficult – that she remembers from childhood. Though she wasn’t exactly shy, she was most comfortable in her own company, where she would often sit cross-legged on the floor, tongue out with concentration, and focusing intently on drawing and creating her “own little world.” Her parents were often preoccupied with caring for Atwell’s younger sister Lola, who is autistic with very high support needs.  

As she got older, meanwhile Atwell became more and more aware of how naturally she wore a kind of mask around other people. “I thought, I'm really having to hide a lot of how I actually am; I thought that everybody had this intense impostor syndrome in terms of just being a normal person,” she says. In May 2023, Atwell learned that she is autistic, which has helped her to make sense of many different moments. On reflection, Atwell says, her experiences growing up meant that “my idea of autism was so narrow”.

Though Light Sleeper was already finished by the time this happened, many of the songs – which Atwell jokingly brands her Autism Anthems – explore an uneasy sense of disconnect, and pretending to be someone else in order to fit in. “I wrote this album before I got my diagnosis, so it’s comforting to see that I was approaching a place of self acceptance even without answers for why I am the way that I am,” she observes. On ‘Sylvester’ she revisits a childhood alter ego invented to entertain her family, and the impulse to play the clown in an attempt to be liked: “I just put myself down, and made

myself as ridiculous as possible,” she says. Though the softly-strummed folk ballad ‘The Weeping’ was written about growing up with Lola, “I was trying to tell myself something, ”she says. In the first verse, Atwell sings of viewing herself and her sister as“ two halves of a whole”. Describing herself as a “walking open wound” this is Atwell’s rawest songwriting to date; it cuts so deep, she can only rehearse it in a couple of goes each time.  

Fresh from supporting Ed Sheeran at the Royal Albert Hall, Atwell has announced a series of intimate live shows next June with stops at London’s

Union Chapel, Bristol’s Thekla, and Manchester’s converted cinema venue Band On The Wall. These intimate surroundings should prove the ideal match for these exposing, quietly fearless songs of self-exploration. Once again, Atwell is releasing her album with Lucy Rose’s indie label Real Kind Records, an imprint of Communion.  

Motifs of sleeping and waking run throughout Light Sleeper, which constantly stirs and settles, Atwell embracing the full range and rawness of her voice like never before. By the title-track, which closes the album, twinkling, starry synthesizers lead her to a place of quiet realization: “I’m ready to be alight sleeper again/To wake up and feel everything/I can carry the weight of it”

‍