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SOUND SPACE BETWEEN Maria Kelly reflects upon the
journey she’s taken, and challenges she’s encountered, in the creation of her debut album. words: Zara Hedderman photo: Stephen Lovatt A little past the halfway point of Maria Kelly’s The Sum of the In-between, on a song entitled permission, we hear a woman recite the following: “If you could go back to the version of yourself that had just finished college, what would you tell her about the time between then and now?” It’s a question that, on a blissfully sunny summer evening, feels like a natural way to conclude my conversation with Maria Kelly as she edges ever closer to the release of her deftly-penned and deeply affecting debut record. A considered pause hangs in the air before she poignantly offers the advice she’d share with her younger self. “I would tell her that she can do hard things. Not to give so much of herself to other people. And, finally, that she deserves the right help and support to get through whatever she’s going through.” That reinstatement of self-worth is a stark contrast to the Maria we meet on panic, the opening track of her record. An emotive sound collage centred on percussion mimicking a pounding heartbeat that culminates in a recording of the Dublin-based artist (made when she was seventeen) in a fraught state whispering, “I can’t communicate any of this to anyone.” In the initial moments of the album, Kelly cultivates a feeling of claustrophobia felt within one’s body and mind, launching the listener into a body of work that is constantly in conversation with itself. Over The Sum of the In-between’s succinct thirty-four minutes, the lyrical themes are anchored by anxiety, self-doubt and the importance of support. The latter is conveyed through a series of voice notes from friends stitched into the seams of these delicate soundscapes. In those brief messages there’s humour, reassurance and, most importantly, love. Punctuating the lush tonal palette with these affirmations adds another perspective to the period in which Kelly was recording the LP. “Me and someone very close to me had very serious mental health issues over the last three years. [The album] touches on mental health and figuring your way through those issues as well as navigating through your twenties,” she explains. “Throughout the process, a lot of what made that time better was my friends and people around me. Both from the perspective of them supporting me, but also because people are always going through their own thing, as well. They can almost always give you the advice that they should be telling themselves. So, I thought it would be really nice to hear all these different voices throughout, even if they’re kind of saying the same thing sometimes.” To any songwriter the process of writing and releasing a debut album is a monumental milestone. It’s a vitally important introduction. An opportunity to capture who you are at a particular point in your life, and make sense of that time. To be so revealing of oneself can be a daunting task to comprehend and overcome. For Kelly, it seems to have been an essential exercise in her personal and professional growth. “The album is a chronicle of the last three years of my life. I had a really weird three years and being able to write about it was definitely cathartic. It was difficult, in a way, because it was a different way of processing things for me. But certain tracks, such as 1bed, I wrote in the space of ten minutes. It was a very peculiar splurge on a page that came from a feeling I was untangling in therapy at the time. It was almost like pulling something out and seeing it. And then being like, “Wow, I didn’t realise I was feeling that or that it was even there inside me.” I suppose, mostly, the album was my way of making something out of the last three years and trying to change my perspective around things,” she explains. Within that three year period, Maria Kelly graduated from Dublin’s renowned BIMM Institute, a hub that has spawned recent success stories in Irish music such as Fontaines D.C. and The Murder Capital. Speaking about her post-college expectations and experiences – many of which inform the stark lyricism throughout The Sum of the In-between – Kelly is unwavering in detailing the myriad of pressures she put upon herself at that formative time. “When I finished college, I fully believed things would, immediately, happen for me. But after an intense four years of studying music, when I graduated I was like, “I do not want to play. I needed to take a break from music. I didn’t feel like I wanted to do the thing I had just spent so long doing,” she recalls. However, affording herself the space to take a breather from her craft felt as though it would be to the detriment of the development of her career. She continues, “In the Irish music industry, it’s so easy to feel as though if you’re not doing anything, people will forget about you. After a while, I was convinced I was irrelevant and no one cared about whether I made music or not. There’s also the pressure of social media, too. I was seeing other people progress in their careers. It’s like being in a Catch-22 where you’re like, “I don’t want to do it, but if I don’t do it now am I going to ruin it for myself forever?” Removing herself from the claustrophobia of the Irish music scene, a period of restoration came when Maria moved to Berlin, returning to Dublin in late 2019. The proceeding months saw her and her partner relocate to a cottage in a remote part of Wexford, within walk52