Brooklyn via Dublin musician Sorcha Richardson is back again with another slice of her beautifully introspective narrative-driven electronic pop.
Following on from the lovely 4AM, released earlier this summer, Waking Life is another heartbreakingly honest portrait of things not going to plan. Facing the realisation she can’t put a relationship back together that is already falling apart at the seams, Richardson instructs the subject “Please don’t waste your voice on us, if all you hear is white noise, yeah all you hear is white noise”.
Waking Life features Richardson’s typically layered and atmospheric production. It’s hard not to hear the tears and Dublin rain falling in the solid and un-showy beat, actual white noise and the muted melodies that gradually emerge over the duration of this song. Richardson sings about dying flowers and chips of flaking paint and faded colours and fingers wrapping around her beating heart like branches in a way that conjures every single detail in your mind.
Describing her inspiration, Richardson says
”Waking Life' is a song I started writing around my last birthday. There's something about birthdays that force you to pause and reflect on your life and take stock of where you're at. Sometimes that's a really fun and fulfilling thing to do but sometimes it can feel really shitty. I've spent a lot of my life saying to myself that 'by the time I'm X years old, I'll have overcome that fear, I'll have worked out all those issues, I'll have mended that relationship.' This song is about getting to a point in life and suddenly realizing that your reality falls way short of the dream you were holding onto in your head. It's about having no idea how to reconcile the discrepancies between the two, but also wondering how or why you thought it would be different.“
I can’t get enough of Sorcha Richardson. I just can’t.
Catch Sorcha on tour with Imelda May next month:
24/10: Limerick, UCH
25/10: Limerick, UCH
27/10: Sligo Live
28/10: Killarney, INEC
29/10: Cork, Opera House
31/10: Wexford, Speigeltent