Colourshop Finds Inner Serenity in the Present with Sailing Boat

The following feature is now included in our online magazine which is also available in print.

Issue #3

Occasionally, an artist chooses to bring things back to basics. For Colourshop, London-bred, Barcelona-residing songwriter, his latest single Sailing Boat is that time. Out September 6, 2025, the single presents a bare-bones, acoustic sound that's at once intimate and gently insistent. Finally, after years of experimentation with changing sonic colors, Colourshop wagers everything on something less tense but by no means small-time. What ensues is a ballad that retains the bossa nova beat but also possesses a lyrical heaviness that lingers long after the song has finished its final fade.

Cut at RoomTo Studio in association with producers Oscar Bragado and Jason Boshoff, and featuring Bryan Curtis behind the drums, Sailing Boat glides with a nonchalance that appears to be planned. The sound never overwhelms the message, rather allowing the gentle guitar, loose percussion, and breezy rhythm to lead the listener. Its tone is that of Kings of Convenience's dainty clarity, Lianne La Havas's soulful nuance, and that stripped-back vulnerability that has characterized Damien Rice for so long. As with all those bands, Colourshop derives magic from restraint.

Essentially, Sailing Boat is more than a love ballad or introspective work of acoustic pop. It is a paean to mastery—or its failure. The maritime metaphor cuts deep, setting life as an endless dance with powers outside of our hands. The winds blow, the tides shift, and the best we can do is steer when we are able and let go when we cannot. In a universe that so celebrates control and certainty, Colourshop's message is one of the loveliness of release. Floating occasionally creates the most incredible views.

The message of this song is particularly pertinent in an era where doubt has become something of a ubiquitous shadow. It's an album that'll have listeners reminiscing about albums that conveyed the same emotions, whether it's Nick Drake's Pink Moon, Norah Jones's Come Away With Me, or even the movie-like calmness of João Gilberto's original bossa nova recordings. Like those, Sailing Boat won't be racing ahead. It encourages you to sit with it, to breathe a bit more slowly, and to notice that meaning does not always lie in where you arrive but in the way you arrive there.

Colourshop's relocation to Barcelona is on this as well. There's a sun-soaked tranquility to the song that is fitting for the Mediterranean terrain—something in which the sea itself is both source and metaphor. This relocation has the sense of less of an afterthought and more of a shift of direction, sending him toward something greater and more contemplative, as if the change of terrains served to shed fat to reveal something more intimate.

For aficionados of indie folk and acoustic soft-pop, Sailing Boat will be that late-night favorite—best consumed during a lonely walk home, or on Sunday afternoons when time slows down. It stands with the introverted closeness of Iron & Wine's early era, the emotive dignity of Laura Marling, or the ambient coziness of José González. But even amongst that throng, the tone of Colourshop stands out, clean and sincere in intention.

This release might be viewed as turning inwards, but it is every bit an opening out—a widening of perspective that extends the invitation to the listener. Colourshop has written a track that acknowledges the turn of life, yet prefers to find comfort in its necessity. Sailing Boat is not a song about finding direction, it's one that finds that sometimes direction finds you.

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