Laura Duff - On Our Radar Q&A: "The sea is somewhere I go when I need to reconnect and ground myself – somewhere I get a lot of peace and solace"

Laura Duff

Can you walk me through the recording process of Sea Legs?

Michael Keating, who is also our guitarist, recorded, produced and mixed the record, and we recorded it in his home studio in Knockaderry, in rural West Limerick, over about a year. We went in with a couple of songs ready at a time – it was very different to the studio time that we would have done before. When you’re hiring a studio, it’s all very strict schedule and timing wise. Taking more time with this was really important for us, but it was very different to the last couple of EPs that we’ve recorded, for sure.

You wrote Sea Legs as an homage to your late father – can you tell me more about the album’s themes?

I was very intentional with writing an album for my Dad, from the outset. The sea is a through-line, a running theme throughout the whole album, and that comes from my memories as a child and teenager, spending time by the sea. My Dad loved the sea and he was a fisher as well. The sea is somewhere I go when I need to reconnect and ground myself – somewhere I get a lot of peace and solace.

Did you find comfort in processing those complex emotions through songwriting?

Writing is like my therapy, it’s so cathartic – it’s how I process emotions and things that happened to me. Writing is something I really lean on. That’s one of the reasons we had to be so gradual with the recording, because I didn’t have 15 songs ready on day one.  I was very much – and I always will be, I suppose – moving through all of these emotions that come with grief and losing a parent. So the songs that were coming out over that year came very gradually.

Sea Legs is out now.