Sarah Kinsley has always written from the in-between. Her debut album Escaper felt like motion without arrival, all longing and soft-focus ache, songs that hovered just out of reach. But with fleeting, she isn’t chasing the feeling anymore. She’s standing still long enough to watch it move through her. This EP lives in impermanence. As proof that something mattered.
Written during a rare stretch of time where she could sit with her work before releasing it, fleeting carries a new kind of clarity. Influences like The Blue Nile, New Order, and Blood Orange don’t show up as references so much as residue. Synths breathe. Melodies linger. Everything feels slightly nocturnal, like city lights seen after something has already ended.
From Ambiguity to Saying It Plainly
Where Sarah once hid behind metaphor, fleeting is more direct. She talks openly about learning to stop protecting herself with ambiguity, about realizing that saying exactly what you want or feel can be more powerful than clever distance. The vulnerability here is quieter, but sharper. Less defense mechanism, more acceptance. That honesty extends to the production. She is a maximalist when it counts, especially on tracks like “Lonely Touch,” where layers pile up until yearning becomes physical. The sound does not resolve. It surrounds.
Even the ballads resist neat closure, favoring texture over answers.
Cinematic Without Escaping Reality
Film has always been part of her musical language, bridging her classical training with pop songwriting. On fleeting, that influence becomes more intentional. Instead of scoring a fantasy, she’s soundtracking real moments. Walking home at dawn. Feet aching. Euphoria curdling into quiet reflection. The city is greatly a collaborator.
Live, those private moments dissolve into something communal. She describes locking eyes with fans mid-song and feeling time fold in on itself, past meaning meeting present emotion and bleeding forward. What once felt dangerous to share suddenly feels held.
Fleeting does not try to make permanence out of passing moments. It honors them as they are. Brief. Intense. Transformative. Sarah is asking us to feel, fully, before the moment moves on.
And maybe that’s the resolve to entangled feelings here. Not escape, but arrival. Not running, but letting go.
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