Gabrielle Shonk

For Gabrielle Shonk's delicate, brimming sophomore offering, Gabrielle brings herself fully into view. The songs on Across The Room go back to 2018, when Shonk, still wrapped up in the success of her debut, started thinking about a sophomore project. She says some songs on the record began as stowed away writing projects that began in green rooms. Whatever downtime she had during the busy business of touring, Shonk and frequent collaborator and co-writer Jessy Caron (Men I Trust) worked on several new songs together. Out of those sessions emerged “Reminds Me of You,” a wistful, sombre song emanating a familiar feeling of grief when everything reminds you of the love you’ve lost. On “People Pleaser,” a song tenderly grappling with what happens when you place other people’s needs above your own, and “5 A.M.,” a smooth, jazz inflected track putting Shonk back into the moment of seeing someone from her past for the first time again, something that reverberates in recognition a thousand times over if you’ve ever been so lucky to love hard and feel it even harder when it ends. Every track on Across The Room began as a feeling. Each was the seed of something Shonk noted down and stashed away for later, once she had felt what she needed to and could reasonably tackle such subject matter later on. Because the process of moving through to move on begins with letting yourself come to terms with a feeling before understanding what really happened.