Sorcha Richardson talks songwriting, touring with Imelda May, and returning home

It’s truly a mark of how well the Dublin music scene fosters its own talent that Sorcha Richardson, a musician who has spent the better part of the last eight years plugging her considerable talents out in Brooklyn and throughout the United States, can come back home to Ireland and immediately find herself inundated with gig opportunities.

“I hadn’t been to Dublin in eight months,” the singer tell me, “so, I thought that I’d come back and catch up with some friends while I was home. I was thinking of maybe doing a few small gigs, The Ruby Sessions or something. But then I met up with one of my friends who works at the Grand Social and he encouraged me to do more. He said, ‘if you’re home and you want to do a headline show while you’re here, we can arrange that.’ I think it’s a case that, because people know I’m only going to be home for a short while, they’ll always ask me if I want to perform.

“I’d originally planned to go back to New York late in August but then I got asked to the Sounds of the Safe Harbour music trail in Cork last month so I decided to stay on an extra two weeks to do that. Then I got the offer to support Imelda May on her Irish tour. So I said ‘Ok well I’ll stay around to do that.’ It’s just kept extending. As it stands I don’t think I’ll be heading back to New York until next year.”

The 27 year old’s return to Ireland comes at an interesting time. Aside from the fact that she’s making tentative inroads back in her home country, the singer has also been working on new styles in her music. Her newest single, ‘Waking Life’, is a glorious, electro-indie anthem.

“I moving around sonically at the moment,” says the singer. “With each single release I’m continuing to refine the sonic scope of what I’m doing, fine-tuning things as I go along. I always want to feel like I have freedom.”

What brought on the change?

“I was making music that was a lot quieter and sparse and I found the shows I was doing a bit…boring (laughs). I mean it wasn’t really stuff that would make me super excited as a music fan. So I was thinking, right I don’t want to make quiet, introspective music like that. I wanted to do something that would allow me to build the shows up a bit more.”

Older songs, like the much-lauded ‘Lost’ and ‘Ruin Your Night’, came from a different sensibility, Sorcha claims. They were organic and tailored to very specific people or ideas. But for her new songs – ‘Waking Life’ and the similarly brilliant ‘4AM’ – things took a different turn.

“Even though I recorded them all with the same producer,” she says, “I told myself, ‘I don’t want to approach these songs with any rules. I want us to just go and see where we end up.’ And for me that feels like a lot more scope in terms of where I go sonically with the songs I make. I can be a bit more experimental and not stay within this one little box, which gets a bit boring.”

It would be easy to read the lyrics of the song as chiming with Sorcha’s personal circumstances. “I’ve been waiting for a sign/Maybe it already came” she sings in the first verse. Is this the music of a 27 year old singer disillusioned with her current circumstances?

“‘Waking Life’ was a song that I just sort of wrote quite quickly with my brain turned off,” she replies. “I wrote it around the time of my last birthday. You know how, when you reach any milestone, you start to take stock of things? I was thinking ‘uh I can’t believe another year has just gone by and not much has changed.’ I just wasn’t feeling that thrilled with how things were panning out. But this wasn’t something I acknowledged while writing the song. It was one of those things that I had to write in order to understand what I was feeling. It went back to this moment when a bunch of friends were coming round to mine in Brooklyn. They’d been on this big incredible round-the-world trip and their final stop was New York. And I remember sitting in my apartment with a guitar just waiting on them to come. And I was just singing ‘Waking Life’ in whatever chords came to the top of my head.”

The upswing of finding creativity from not knowing what the hell she’s doing with her life is that Sorcha has been gifted with new opportunities at home. The singer will bring her music to a considerable audience when she supports Imelda May on an Irish tour at the end of this month.

“I’m so grateful to be able to do these shows,” Sorcha enthuses. “There so many of these Irish towns and cities that I’ve never played in before and I’m excited for it because some of the venues are unbelievable. I really can’t wait.”