With The Lighthouse, Dutch-British singer-songwriter and composer Tessa Rose Jackson delivers her most personal record to date. Written during a quiet stretch in rural France, the album marks her return to releasing music under her own name after a decade as Someone, and reflects a shift toward clearer, more direct songwriting. The Lighthouse sits at the crossroads of folk and cinematic alt-pop, shaped by themes of grief, family, memory, and belonging. Rather than framing loss as something heavy or distant, Jackson approaches it as part of everyday life. Many of the songs are connected to people close to her, including her late mother, her partner, and her nieces, grounding the record in lived experience.

In this track by track breakdown of the album, Jackson walks through the ideas, images, and moments that shaped each song, from imagined stories that unlocked the writing process to real conversations and emotional turning points. It’s a clear-eyed look at how The Lighthouse came together, and how these songs became a way of making sense of where she’s been and where she is now.

The Lighthouse

This was the song that paved the way for the rest of the record. At the time, I was in the throws of starting up thewriting process, and things weren’t going smoothly. I felt oddly muted and distant, a relatively unfamiliar feeling for me. I wasn’t sure I had anything to say that was relevant enough to warrant being put into a song. But then, during a long walk, an image came to me. An exhausted sailor, lost at sea. The air around him thick with fog, the likelihood of him ever reaching land again slight. Then suddenly he spots a light in the distance. As he draws closer, he discovers itto be a lighthouse set atop a cliff on an island. He doesn’t know it yet, but I imagined him to have accidentally arrived at the land of the dead. The villagers in this land out of time would be people that had lived, and had passed. I imagined an inn-keeper, a preacher, a farmer. I imagined what they might tell him, the stories they might have, the wisdom they could impart. And I imagined them discovering that the sailor was not yet ready to be here, and would hatch a plan to send him back to the land of the living. When I got back from my walk, I immediately picked up my guitar and started finding the chords that set the opening scene of this story. Before long I was up, up and away, andthe song ended with the sailors first steps on this otherwordly beach. ‘Guess this must be the place’

At first, I thought I would write a concept album, inspired by Anaïs Mitchell’s Hadestown, but very quickly I let go of the idea. It felt too constrictive, the story I wanted to tell was my own – but the sailor’s tale still lingers subliminally throughout the songs. You can spot it if you know.

The Man Who Wasn’t There

Continuing in the vein of the spectral – this song plays with the similarity between ghosts and the hypothetical versions we imagine of ourselves – also a form of spirit. The constant considering: ‘what if I had done that?’. ‘What if I had taken that job?’ Or ‘What if I hadn’t broken up with so- and-so?’. An addictive way of thinking, but ultimately a useless one. Conjuring up replicas of yourself that simply never were, and never will be, sometimes even projecting this onto others and pressuring them to be or act a certain way. I feel a sense of disdain towards myself sometimes when I catch myself doing it or others doing it to me – so it felt right for the verses to carry just a slight tinge of menace to them. I liked the idea of there being a male chorus, almost an underlining of my own intention in the echoing: “I’m not carrying that again”. I do see my imaginary villagers in my mind’s eye when I hear those low, rumbling voices. In the choruses I wanted the song to suddenly lift up, as if all gravity has disappeared. Dave, my brilliant bass player, created this beautiful soundscape with his bass and and his pedals that captured it perfectly. The other key element to this song is the string arrangement, which Darius Timmer – my partner both in life and music – created. Sometimes matching the tension of the verses, and sometime swooping in and out of dissonance at the end – it feels like a real protagonist in this song.

The Bricks that Make the Building

My ghost song. I was raised by two mums, and when I was a young teenager one of them passed away. Many of the songs on this album are about my mum who passed – in fact the whole record is dedicated to her. This is one of these songs. More broadly, it is about the people who came before us – our ancestors. Not necessarily in blood, more in care and guidance and in paving the way for our lives to move the way they do now. An honouring of the traces they leave behind and a dedication to carrying on the torch. Her birthday was in October, and so the line ‘When October arrives / tell them stories about / the bricks that make the building’ holds extra significance to me.

Dawn

I’m lucky enough to be an auntie to two fantastic teenage girls. Both of them are incredible, inspiring people and a lot of what I do and the way I think about the future is, in part, fuelled by them. This song specifically I wrote after a very heart-felt conversation with one of my nieces, in which I recognised some of my own self-critique and harshness in her own struggles. A protective wash came over me, I just wanted to hold her and make all that stuff go away. I also feltimmensely proud of her courage in opening up to me like that, something I wouldn’t have dared do at her age. Dawn was written to her, as a salve, as a tribute. A song of reassurance.

Built to Collide

I call this my ‘rant’ song. A song about accepting that sometimes you live and you learn.. and sometimes you live and you don’t learn. It’s what makes us so gloriously, imperfectly human.

When I wrote “Built to Collide”, I had just finished writing most of the new record. Along the way I had sometimes made it unnecessarily complicated for myself, twisting into mental pretzels here and there trying to meet certain unrealistic standards that nobody but my own ego was expecting me to meet. But by this time, I had made it over the hump. I felt good. And I was looking back at the ‘me’ that started the writing process with a playful sense of self-deprecation. My dear friend and brilliant musician Benjamin Longman had written an instrumental demo for another project that had been put on hold. I loved the energy of it so much, and Ben had given me permission to turn it into a full song. It’s a linear track, it stays on the same chord for ages until the moment where it finally breaks into a new chord change and the whole thing opens up. Originally, I had planned to re-structure it, to give it a ‘chorus’. But when I sat down with it I thought I’d to do a quick pass of myself just improvising to the song as it was, and it felt unbelievably good. That first improvised take is very close to the final melody and lyrics I landed on. It was a wonderful feeling to just rant and rant and rant over this same chord and then have a singular moment of release – so I decided to leave it unchanged. Singing this one live always feel like the biggest release.

Gently Now

Ghost stories are a big favourite of mine. Anything supernatural has always intrigued me, to the point of freaking myself out beyond consolation. But after having lost one of my mums, I found myself even more deeply fascinated with the idea of ‘haunting’. Specifically, why this should always be a negative thing. Whenever I’d think of the idea of her coming back to haunt me… I could only imagine it being lovely. I would love to speak to her again. To hear her voice. To tell her about my life. To hear her advice. This song is my imaginary version of such a haunting. It puts her back in the room for me, just for four short minutes.

When Your Time Comes

This is the track in which the main theme of the album is most nakedly bared. Harking back to my imaginary tale of the sailor and the island of the dead, here I imagined the villagers sending our hero back to the land of the living. Waving goodbye, each one of them knowing they will see him there again, eventually. Just not quite yet. When his time comes.

I wanted the song to have a collectiveness to it, I can imagine all the villagers stomping, clapping, singing it together. The final section specifically is a huge favourite of mine. In the bridge all the fear, the dread, the harrowing endlessness of death are mirrored in dissonant strings and flutes and synths, building and building in tension until it breaks into a swell of ecstasy for the final chorus. The sweeping strings that take over there (arranged by Sam Rowe, who did most of the string arrangement on the record and is a bona fide genius and a dear friend) made me tear up when we recorded it in the studio. To me, it channels old Chaplin Hollywood, a deep melancholy mixed with lightheaded euphoria. Life and death. The light and the dark.

Fear Bangs the Drum

I am quite a fearful person. I’ve noticed it get a bit worse as I age, the worry about losing the people I love or getting ill myself are more present than they used to be. Sometimes these fears can become paralysing, especially when I’m stuck in a nighttime spiral. This song, for me, acts as a reminder. To learn to sit with my fear, and let it rage out for a bit. More often than not, like any storm, it will die down.

By Morning

Have you ever found yourself in a heated argument with a loved one, when suddenly you realise… you might be in the wrong? But you’re simply too invested to just gracefully admit defeat and back down? Well. Last year, my partner (Darius) and I were having a row about something – most likely trivial – and I had a lightbulb moment such as this. Uh-oh. Pretending to need some space to ‘blow off steam’ I retreated upstairs to my studio to puzzle together what to do or say next. Almost mindlessly, I grabbed a guitar off the rack and started noodling while I put my thoughts together.

And within twenty minutes, ‘By Morning’ had tumbled out. It took me by surprise. Gingerly, I called for Darius to come here, please. He did. I played him the song. He forgave me. Phew.

Grace Notes

Being in my early thirties now, I find myself struggling with certain expectations and norms that are often projected and imposed on people, and mostly women, of my age. The question of whether or not I want children. Should I be worried about getting older? How will I feel when I find

my first grey hair? Society has brainwashed me into thinking this will be the beginning of my decline. I defy such a thought. “Grace Notes” feels like my love song to the privilege of aging. We only have so much time on this earth. We only have one timeline. We do our best to be good, we make a little mark if we are lucky. And time waits for no one. So let’s not waste it.

Wild Geese

My mother who passed was from Minnesota. In life, she struggled with the confines and rules of society. She was rebellious, outrageous, defiant, but deeply troubled. Now, I like to imagine her spirit finally released from every shackle. I picture her as a beautiful bird, free to swoop and soar over her cherished Lake Superior, which she used to speak of with such a sense of homesickness. The title is also a nod to one of my favourite poems, “Wild Geese”, by Mary Oliver which holds the beautiful line “The world offers itself to your imagination / calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting / over and over announcing your place / in the family of things”. I think she never quite felt she had a place in the family of things, so in this song I like to remind her that yes, she most certainly did.

The guitar solo, played by my brilliant guitar player Kevin van Moorsel, took a full day to create and beautifully reflects the sound and cacophony of a chattering, squawking, lamenting flock of geese as it passes overhead.

Prizefighter

This song is about the bully that lives in our heads. At least – I have one of these. My resident critic, whispering insecurities and throwing me off my game at the worst possible moment. The older I get, the more I’ve been practicing telling that bully to back off. To embrace my own imperfection instead of trying to adhere to the ridiculously high standards I set myself. To be my own cheerleader, my own prizefighter. This song has been especially meaningful toplay live. I can always feel the energy in the room shift and contract as everybody recognises something of this theme in their own lives. I’ve had many very open and sincere conversations with people after the show. Knowing this feeling is so universal acts as a comfort, and a fortification.

Tessa’s new album The Lighthouse is out now, listen here.