On her return as Austel, Devon-born, London-based artist Annie Rew Shaw treads a different path from the one that saw her receive widespread plaudits for the delicate, luscious piano songs of her 2024 debut album Dead Sea.

Following years as a session musician – performing at festivals such as Glastonbury and touring the UK – Austel’s 2018 debut EP earned praise from BBC 6 Music and The Line of Best Fit, with her 2020 follow-up Cold Love gaining further support from Fresh on the Net, O2 Music and BBC Introducing. In 2024, she released her debut album Dead Sea, a dreamy exploration of loss, recovery and transformation. Self-produced and featuring collaborations with Grammy Award-winning engineer Guy Massey, the record marked a milestone after seven years of artistic development.

Now exploring the folkier intimacies of the guitar for music that’s also in conversation with the field recordings of Jon Hopkins & King Creosote, Adrianne Lenker and Cassandra Jenkins, Austel is developing a very personal sound that she still manages to make feel spacious and open.

The first track of this new material, The Beach in December, is a gently arresting song that recalls in its smaller details the steps towards acceptance after the premature end of a budding relationship, but on a broader scale draws from a revelatory ayahuasca ceremony that “reignited a lot of childhood memories that I’d completely forgotten” and the idea of mapping out a life from those small fragments of experiences we often disregard.

“It’s about a fleeting summer romance in Brighton with someone that didn’t quite come to fruition”, she explains. “It ended amicably, but it was quite sad – it was the first time for a little while that I’d thought that I could have a relationship with someone. It really made me think about how we interpret rejection as an adult, and how we want to move into whatever is to come”.

“The field recordings are from the beach in Brighton. I recorded the entire journey on the train, down to the sea and coming back. You can hear the beep of the Thameslink train doors, which is perfectly in tune and in time. I was really interested in the science behind it, how these recordings can evoke such an emotional connection. Knowing that I’ve embedded something beyond music within the song has a deep meaning for me.”

After feeling somewhat boxed in by going the route she felt the wider industry wanted her to take on some previous work, there is a feeling of newfound freedom, possibility and acceptance present throughout The Beach in December, a song that’s both more traditionally ‘folk’, and more experimental.

“I feel emotional listening to it even now”, says Austel. “It’s such a relief to finally feel like I’m making music that really, fully represents me”.