B-Side Guys

Sometimes the most haunting moments come not from what we’ve experienced, but from what almost was. On “Squinters,” Nashville-via-Sydney artist Imogen Clark excavates the emotional terrain of unrealized possibilities with surgical precision, creating what she calls “the road not taken, the life I would’ve lived if I’d never left my hometown.”

Co-written with Steve Poltz during a chance meeting at a festival, “Squinters” frames its examination of alternate realities through vivid domestic imagery—laundry on clotheslines, fast food drive-throughs, suburban entrapment. Clark’s storytelling transforms these mundane markers into profound symbols of paths diverged. When she describes having “a soul full of splinters,” the metaphor perfectly captures how fragmented identity becomes when constantly looking backward at what might have been.

Musically, the track achieves the “glittering vulnerability” that Glide Magazine aptly identified, placing Clark comfortably in conversation with contemporaries like Lucy Dacus while maintaining her distinctive voice. Bryan Sutton’s delicate acoustic guitar work creates a framework that feels appropriately fragile for a narrative balanced on the knife-edge between humor and heartbreak. Clark’s glockenspiel debut during the solo provides an unexpected textural element that evokes childhood musical boxes—a fitting accompaniment for a song that essentially asks: what if I never grew up and out?

What makes “Squinters” particularly compelling is how it transforms geographic distance into emotional revelation. The physical act of driving with sun-blinded eyes becomes a metaphor for moving forward while partially obscured vision forces reliance on memory and instinct. This duality mirrors Clark’s artistic journey from Western Sydney bars as a teenager to global stages across America and Europe.

As the second single from her forthcoming album “Choking on Fuel” (due May 30), “Squinters” suggests Clark’s return to acoustic-driven performance hasn’t diminished her emotional intensity. Rather, the stripped-back approach magnifies the raw confession at the song’s core—the admission that we all occasionally wonder about alternate timelines while driving home squinting against the setting sun, telling ourselves comfortable lies about roads not taken.