Indigo Sparke shares a video “Hysteria,” the title track from her forthcoming Aaron Dessner-produced album out October 7th via Sacred Bones.

“This song is about being inside of love, right at the edge of hysteria,” says Sparke “There is often an axis point in things. A place where things can tip into chaos or become unhinged. A marker point. As beautiful and turbulent as these moments are, sometimes it’s hard to return from them to a place that makes sense and feels safe. I think for so long and maybe still, sometimes, I find it hard to keep my balance in love. So many fireworks. So many sorry’s. So much hope. So much deep yearning. So much joy. So much poignant reflection in the tidal pools of intimacy. This song was the birth place of the whole album. I had this song and the title before the rest found a home inside of this world too. I am still trying to unravel the bitter sweet nature of love and longing. What it means to truly let go. What it means to truly love.”

Video director Nina Gofur on the “Hysteria” video: “”Indigo’s voice has this unique vulnerability to it. It’s simultaneously tender and raw, yet possesses a lot of strength. Her lyrics wrap around you like a silver thread, stitching together different feelings you’ve been afraid to acknowledge. When I first heard the song I wanted to honor the feeling it elicited – an ode to reconciling the parts of yourself that seem to be in a tug of war. Indigo’s constant motion paints a blurred image of her either running away or returning to herself. Ultimately, she welcomes Hysteria as a guest; a temporary visitor. I wanted the visual to speak to the temporality of Hysteria and all the beautifully complex feelings it brings.” 

On Hysteria, Sparke examines love, loss, grief, a newly realized rage, her history, dreams, and the emotional weather patterns surrounding those sensations: her words tell the stories, and the sounds act them out. It’s a diary built for big stages. Hysteria arrives just a year after her critically acclaimed minimalist debut, Echo. Here though, Sparke offers an expansive body of work—it’s a simultaneously nostalgic yet clear and complex collection that expands her sound and outlook.

Work on Hysteria began at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic while Sparke was stranded in quarantine in Australia waiting for her visa to be renewed so she could return to the States. Her debut Echo was being prepared for release, but Sparke was already experiencing a flow of creative thought as a result of shifts in her own life. “I was going through an intense separation and processing all of that in the deep flux of the world collapsing,” she recalls. “I was moving through huge waves of grief and trying to reconcile what was going on, internally and externally. The grief opened a doorway to the past I thought I had made peace with. But there were days where I just couldn’t get off the floor. It felt like everything was falling through this hole in my chest. It felt stark and nauseating to feel such immense groundlessness whilst also looking at all the different versions of myself I had been. All the varied different chapters I had experienced, from heavy drug use, to sexual abuse, love in all its forms, complex trauma and mental health, time spent living in India and Bali seeking something deeper to make sense of it all. It was almost like my life was flashing before my eyes. I realized I was in a profound altered state, as everything simultaneously stood still around me yet was flashing violently inside of me.”

To Sparke, Hysteria is reflective of the growth she’s experienced over the last many years—to the point where, in her words, it almost presents a different artistic perspective entirely. “I feel like I matured a lot in this epoch of expression,” she explains. “When you are alone in the dark, you see yourself more clearly. I realized a lot of my behavior and patterns living at edge states. The edge of hope, sorrow, joy, etc. I was at the axis point inside of love right at the edge of a place that had been a home of hysteria for me in the past. Since this reckoning I’ve been determined to find a sense of surrender in the chaos. An unwavering trust and faith. And a will to remain kind and calm and patient with myself so that I can move towards embodying grace more and more. It’s the only way to survive for me now. So there’s a deeper acceptance of who I am and what’s made me, me. I think in the process of all of this somewhere along the road I quietly became a woman and now I don’t feel as fragile as I once did, or now, I accept the wild inner landscape of myself and my history and it gives me a different kind of strength to work from.”

Photo Courtesy: Angela Ricciardi