“The ocean does not care about you at all,” declares Rachel Bobbitt. “That’s what makes something truly awesome—it could and will exist, with or without you.”
The ocean looms, uncaring yet vital, conceptually and actually on Bobbitt’s debut full-length LP, Swimming Towards the Sand. Raised in the windswept Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia, Bobbitt roots herself in the memories and milestones of home more than a decade after her voice first found an audience through the lens of internet virality. Growing up in a musical household, where her mom’s side hosted kitchen fiddle parties, Bobbitt was surrounded by music from the beginning. At just 16 years old, she’d amassed a large Vine following, performing covers and originals to an audience of 400,000 strong, leading to Shorty Award nominations and being crowned by Buzzfeed as one of “13 Amazing Singers You Should Follow On Vine.” She now looks back at that time with nuance, feeling both reinforced in her abilities by the response and, at the same time, overwhelmed by the onslaught of opinions—opinions on her career, appearance, voice, image—at an age when she was still figuring out what those things meant for herself.
A dozen years later, after studying Jazz and Vocal Pedagogy at the renowned Humber College, learning the rules of the road, and navigating the music industry from her home base in Toronto, Bobbitt arrives at Swimming Towards the Sand with an unwavering sense of purpose. It’s an album that revisits her roots with the clarity of perspective, the wisdom of experience, and the lessons of resilience that can only come with time. It looks back with an eye both clear and nostalgic and reflects her memories via sharply contemporary music.
The record was born in transit—written between call centre shifts, hotel rooms, and fleeting homecomings. Bobbitt recorded the album in Los Angeles with producer Chris Coady (Beach House, Future Islands, DIIV), whose studio near Glendale’s Verdugo Mountains offered a symbolic contrast to the coastal terrain of Nova Scotia. Alongside her musical and life partner, Justice Der, Bobbitt plays through a dozen tracks that are shaped by the East Coast—sinking into memory, floating through loss, and emerging from depths renewed.
A natural progression from Bobbitt’s collection of singles and EPs, including The Ceiling Could Collapse (2022) and The Half We Still Have (2023), Swimming Towards the Sand is her most cohesive and expansive work to date: a poignant exploration of grief, girlhood, memory, and return. It centres itself around memories and dreams, and how one can often feel interchangeable with the other. It is only through careful observation and steady rumination that we start to draw meaning and distinctions. The album is full is such reflections—and like the ocean, turns discarded bottles into frosted glass, these memories and dreams of loss, grief, and girlhood become something tangible and true.
Bobbitt wields her jazz-trained voice like a guitar or keyboard, layering harmonies in conversation with herself, sometimes subtly, and sometimes pulling focus.
The album begins and ends with dynamic tracks that start lullaby-gentle and explode into full-band reveries: “Don’t Cry” is an ode to best-friendship and Bobbitt’s coming-of-age in rural Nova Scotia, a reflection on girlhood and the confusion and discomfort that accompanies it; “Nothing” quietly stacks up memories before spiralling out into a formless vocal release, fading to the album’s end, an aural symbol of the afterlife.
Side A chronicles a series of losses Bobbitt has endured in recent years. The dreamy, wistful “Hush” is borne from a demo comprised solely of Bobbitt’s vocal layers, placed upon a bedrock of a drum machine and keys, capturing the ache of a love story that never quite was. A whimsical classical guitar guides the ethereal “Light,” described by Bobbitt as “the in-between and transitory feeling of memories.” Indie-rock appears on “Hands Hands Hands”—another track “borne out of loss and grief”—which marries electric guitar, a deceptively joyful synth, and bashing drums for a dramatic elegy, Bobbitt pleading “Tell me you’re okay / you’re okay.” The first half closes out with “Remember,” a mellow, mournful synth line accompanying Bobbitt’s ode to her mother and grandmother, and the moment she found herself comforting the person who once comforted her: “I had to carry you through it / fireworks of wet down your face.” “For me to parent upward in that moment and try to be the support she needed,” Bobbitt says. “When zooming out, I saw how that role falls down forever and ever- someday somebody will be that to me. It deepens the relationship, and that love.”
Side B begins with “Furthest Limb,” Bobbitt’s biggest vocal swing, pushing to her highest notes in between guitar hits, as she searches for reassurance amid a growing disconnect with a loved one.“I Want It All” is a mid-tempo exploration of Bobbitt’s mental health (“I stretch my arms to have it all / but these days they can’t reach”) and the dark and moody “Life By The Marsh” is another reflection of feeling low, Bobbitt so close to the mic it feels like she’s singing directly into your heart. “Ask Again” is awash in the feeling of self-doubt and OCD-induced looping thoughts, its shimmery guitars mirroring the mind’s relentless churn. The final pair—“Deer on the Freeway” and “Sweetest Heart”—embrace the thrill of new infatuation, landing somewhere between Laurel Canyon warmth and the closing credits of a ‘90s romcom.
Throughout Swimming Towards the Sand, Bobbitt returns again and again to the ocean—not just as a symbol, but as part of her internal landscape. “Having the water be so consistent and impartial to you, and terrifying and beautiful,” she says, adding, “it is such a strong presence for me.” The album is textured by the loss, yet it resists despair. It offers a return not just to home, but to self: a reclamation of the things that remain after the tide recedes. Bobbitt describes it as her most fully realized work, and it shows.
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