Video premiere: Racquet, ‘Palm House’

Kevin Bronson on November 19th, 2018

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Racquet is the name for the solo project of L.A.-via-Seattle singer-songwriter Sapphire Jewell, who makes languorous, shape-shifting post-rock — musical Eschers for postgraduate coffee shops where people ignore their books and laptops and just ponder the future. Or strike up conversations with random jazz-heads.

Earlier this year, Jewell released the debut Racquet EP, “Artifacts” (produced by Eric Lilavois), following it up with the single “Nothing Matters” and, now, “Palm House,” the latter named for an actual place in London. It’s a hopeful paean for the songwriter’s contemporaries whose workaday lives seem light-years away from their dreams. “You’ve got the gold / You’ve got it all buried below,” she advises.

“‘Palm House’ is about having a place that centers you — a place that puts you in the right headspace when you’re feeling low,” Jewell says. “For many people it’s their bedroom or favorite park. For me, it’s greenhouses. In London there’s a huge greenhouse called the Palm House. I could just sit there and contemplate my life forever. It inspired a lot of the song.”

The “Palm House” video was directed by Alena Henke and Emily Rawl and “shows normal people in their mundane lives compartmentalizing everything about themselves,” the songwriter says. “Eventually they push beyond the boxes and find a place that brings them back to life.”

Would that we all find that.

||| Watch: The video for “Palm House”