The Goo 1
AUG-SEPT 23 like wow. I thought you can be a weir
d or unusual artist and have a space to do that. That was really influential on me, I think. Being a teenager in Galway where there wasn’t much access to things like that. That is so true, the rural boundaries to live music can be quite prohibitive to a young artist, but still important to invest in your local scenes. I hear a lot of trad influence in your music too, do you think that is influenced by the spaces and music around you growing? Yeah, my first access to playing music was through trad when I was really young. I played fiddle and tin whistle and the trad sessions. You’d be learning tin whistle for the St Patrick’s parade, so that was my first-time playing music in a group. I did a little bit of classical violin as well, but it was mostly trad that was available. If you wanted to learn music in that area, that is what was available to you, which I really liked, it was fun. All the kids in the area would be playing fiddle or accordion or tin whistle or something like that. There was a session we used to go to in the parish community center on Thursday evenings and if you played a tune, they’d give you a bag of crisps and a Ribena, so you’d play a tune to get your Ribena. There was a real emphasis on music where I’m from, I guess because there wasn’t much else to do, there was nowhere to go if you were a teenager, it was just playing in the sessions. Everyone my age was learning an instrument of some kind. Your sophomore album ‘True Love’ is set to be released on September 1st; how has your experience been writing this album? Was it different to writing ‘Bath Time’ in 2019 considering we are now in a post pandemic society. So, this album was mostly written during the pandemic. I had been writing little bits since ‘Bath Time’ was released but it was mainly in that lockdown winter from the end of 2020 to the first half of 2021. I think we were going into the third lockdown or something, and it was really grim. That autumn and winter the main body of the songs appeared. It was a contained, creative time, whereas ‘Bath Time’ was written over several years. I was learning how to write songs back then so it was an accumulative process over time. I was really surprised that my first album got attention, suddenly I found myself in a position I never expected myself to be in, where I was just a musician, I didn’t have to do other things. I then had a confidence where I was like, I know what I’m doing, this is my job, I just have to write songs and they all came out quite fluently. The lack of confidence came back later when it came up to the release. I find that really interesting, the singles for ‘True Love’ embody a really mystical esoteric energy, was there a specific thematic inspiration for the album? With Four Winters, Telling the bees and O Theremin, everything sounds so cohesive, it sounds as though you went into this with a thematic idea, and if not did it just organically bloom into the album? I was organic, I hadn’t planned to write about certain things but then as the songs were being written I could recognise symbols and concerns reemerging. Like a lot of mystical references, there’s a lot of saints on the album, which is interesting to me. I don’t plan to write a song about a certain thing, something will just come up, and it’s interesting that the saints were coming up and devotion too. What devotion means in a mystical sense or a romantic sense or even in a religious sense and how all these things are similar. What it means to devote yourself to a higher power outside of yourself. I was reflecting on that kind of through the process of reflecting on being in love in my early twenties, how that is a form of devotion to something outside of yourself and the way in which the self becomes compromised or altered through that. I think that’s not so different to states of mystical transcendence or devotion as well. I was processing and reflecting, and these were the things that kept coming up. You’re also set to embark on your UK and Irish tour starting September 28th in Whelans, so how do you think this tour will compare to your previous live experiences? Are you bringing anything new to this tour? I know the soundscapes in the album swell at certain points because they’re very dense with a lot of instrumentation. I guess the question is how are you going to translate that into a live setting? I will be touring with as many of the musicians on the album as possible, so there will be harp and drums and synths, it’ll be a much fuller band then lots of my tours before, which have often been solo or with one or two other people. It will be a full band, and a lot of gear, a lot of carrying around heavy synthesizers, and things but it will be worth it. I’ve done so much touring on my own and a lot of gigs on my own, and that can be amazing, very liberating to be able to do it on your own, but it’s also very lonely. Especially if you turn up to a festival and everyone’s with their friends and I’m just here with a guitar. Touring is exhausting and stressful but with a band you get on stage and this sort of magical communication happens between you and the people you’re playing with and it kind of makes the rest of it irrelevant, this is a form of communication that only happens in this space, and that’s really fun and really healing. It feels kind of like a ritual, it’s ceremonial. Maija Sofia launches her new album True Love in Whelans on Sept 28th. www.singularartists.ie PAGE 9