Lucy Summerfield’s ‘When I Leave’ is a Beautiful Tribute to Small Town Aotearoa
After the success of her last single, Kia kaua, Lucy Summerfield brings a cinematic reflection on homesickness with her track When I Leave – out today 21st of August.
The track has a lush string quartet arrangement, layered vocal harmony and lyrics that read like a poem. The imagery is striking as Summerfield sings “Mountains stacked in jagged lines like someone’s ripped up bits of night and glued them onto the horizon.”
Summerfield once again perfectly captures a universal human experience in a way that feels unique. “Sometimes I feel the most homesick when I’m actually home,” Summerfield says, “I remember realising that I wasn’t just longing for the physical place but for the time in my life when I lived there.”
The track walks us through the landscape and people of her hometown, Motueka. Speaking about her songwriting process Summerfield says, “I wanted it to feel like a pepehā, beginning with the mountains and rivers, following to the community and then to my connection to them.”
Hailing from the South Island of New Zealand, Summerfield feels a particular connection to all the small towns that dot Te Waipounamu. “When I Leave is about the special sense of love and pride you get when you’re from somewhere no one’s heard of.”
