A Coming-Of-Age Confessional in “Archie” with Ireland’s Sorcha Richardson
Photo by Colin Brady
On “Archie”, Sorcha Richardson captures those moments that you spent with people as a teenager, reminiscing on how those relationships shape who you are years later. With layers of dreamy vocals and electric guitar sounds, “Archie” is the first glimpse into Richarson’s sophomore LP due early fall. Continuing on with Richardsons’ symbolic tendency to disregard genre, “Archie” stands as a pure introduction to a new beat she has built a groove to. Along with the debut of the single, she follows up with a music video to visually capture the rich lyrics with brutally beautiful Dublin and Wicklow landscapes. Conor and Adam, the two young actors in the music video, perform amazing chemistry with the direction from James Baldwin. The three creatives captured the delicacy of Richardson’s “Archie” as her intimate vision of the narrative is expressed with passion on screen. Her 2019 debut album First Prize Bravery calls to her experiences as a young adulthood, while “Archie” is here to answer everything in between as she reminisces about her teenage relationships.
[UNPUBLISHED]: I read that your dream was to be a drummer when you went to college. How did you experiment with this and when did you start writing music?
[SORCHA RICHARDSON]: So I started playing the drums when I was 10 all the way through school until I was 18. I then moved to New York but couldn’t bring my drum kit because I lived in a dorm room. In my first year of college I was going to the Guitar Center on 14th Street and I could just play the drums there. I felt bad for a while about doing that and I obviously wasn’t going to buy a kit so that’s when I started to spend a lot of time writing songs and playing guitar. I decided to go to open mics in New York and very slowly I would let my friends know that I was doing them. For the first couple of times, I would just do it in front of strangers. I was terrible, I was so nervous. I also think it influences the way I write because I sometimes write songs that are very rhythmically conscious and maybe that’s because I was a drummer.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What’s Ireland’s indie music scene like?
[SORCHA]: I genuinely think it’s incredibly special, especially at this moment. I moved home from New York about 4 years ago, and the community is what has kept me there. Everyone supports each other. Everyone shows up to each other’s gigs. We’re all genuinely friends and fans of each other. I feel really lucky that this scene exists here. In the last few years as well, the type of music that is being made here is diversifying. We just played a show last night in LA which was a conference of Irish music, arts and culture. The lineup included Kneecap from Belfast (who rap in Irish), Denise Chaila and Tolü MaKay. I think it's really exciting that an Irish music showcase can be so diverse. I think people are starting to realise the scope of what's happening in the Irish music scene at home.
[UNPUBLISHED]: How would you describe your sound to someone who hasn’t listened to your music before?
[SORCHA]: I guess it would be a narrative confessional dressed up in alternative indie.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Can you tell us what your new song “Archie” is all about?
[SORCHA]: Yeah, that song is about the people who kind of shape your life and have a big impact on you then you ultimately lose contact with them. I feel like some of the relationships we have when we’re teenagers feel very potent. The stakes feel very high when you’re 17 or 18, everything feels like it’s changing. This song is about your hopes and dreams and the people you share them with but you lose touch with those people. You’re looking back at your younger self and the people who were in your life who no longer are in it in the same way.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What was the writing process like for “Archie”?
[SORCHA]: The writing process for this one was different to most of my songs. I usually write on my own but for this one I went to this studio in the middle of Ireland during one of our lockdowns. I had a grant from the Irish government to go and rent a studio which was cool so I invited a bunch of my friends to come to the studio with me. There were my two friends from Saint Sister, Alex Casnoff, some of the girls from Pillow Queens and my friend Luke who is in a band called Blood Donor. “Archie” was one of the few songs that we wrote where I was like ‘Okay, this one feels like it could be something’. I sent 15 or 20 songs to Alex Cosmo who produced “Archie” and he kept coming back to that one. He told me to go back and rewrite it to anchor it to my life a little bit more. Sometimes when you write songs in a room with loads of people the narrative is a bit blurry because it’s so many different people’s experiences. We slowed the tempo right down and as soon as we did that I was so glad that he convinced me to hold my feet to the fire a bit with this one.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Can listeners expect to hear similar styles and sounds like “Archie” from your sophomore LP?
[SORCHA]: Honestly the album is not very genre specific... There are shades of “Archie” across the album - but it’s not just alternative country sounds with dusty guitars. We had my friend Jake Curran play guitar on the album and once we got him in the studio, that really shaped how some of these songs sound.
[UNPUBLISHED]: Why do you feel this song is the right introductory single for this new era of music?
[SORCHA]: I think it sounds different than anything I’ve put out before. After my first album came out in 2019, I wanted to put out something that felt different. It feels sonically like a good introduction and good launching point. When I showed the album to a couple of people, many really liked that one. Sometimes it’s as simple as that. It’s probably my favourite tune to play live as well so I really don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer - you just have to pick one and go with it.
[UNPUBLISHED]: The music video is very intimately shot across a few locations in Dublin and Wicklow, how do you feel the video reflects the delicacy of the lyrics in “Archie”?
[SORCHA]: For this one, I just wanted to try and capture the importance of that relationship, which can be really hard to do when things are so specific to you. I thought the two actors in it were amazing, Connor and Adam. They never met before that day and I think when you watch it, you can really feel that kinship between them along with the intimacy. I just wanted to capture those moments that you spend with people that are actually the building blocks for real, lasting memories and friendships. The moments that are very formative for shaping who you are as well.
[UNPUBLISHED]: How do you feel you have grown as an artist since your 2019 album First Prize Bravery?
[SORCHA]: I feel like I’ve gotten much more comfortable and I’ve learned how to really enjoy playing live, which used to terrify me. Now I actually really enjoy it and I think that forms how I make music now. So much of this album when I was writing it, I could really imagine what it would feel like to play these songs live. I’m way less ambitious than I used to be and I feel like that serves me better. I used to play things so tightly and put so much pressure on everything.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What was the most memorable gig you have played thus far in your career?
[SORCHA]: I actually just did a headline show in Dublin at the end of March, which was our biggest headline show I’ve done by a mile. We had to reschedule it several times due to Covid so by the time it actually came around it was a sold out show in my hometown after not touring for 2 years. That one was very special.
[UNPUBLISHED]: How did it feel playing “Archie” for the first time live?
[SORCHA]: It’s definitely a much slower pace than a lot of the other songs we have on the set so I wasn’t sure how it would go down. When you’re playing a slower song that nobody in the room knows, it might be the time where everyone goes to the bar and the sound level of the crowd starts to increase - but it actually was the one that people have spoken to me about most after the show.
[UNPUBLISHED]: What do you hope listeners will take away from this song?
[SORCHA]: The best thing that you can hope for is that when you write songs like this, you hope that someone else feels a little less alone in their own experiences. I just hope it can be a soundtrack in their lives and I think that’s enough.
You can find Sorcha play “Archie” and more live at these upcoming shows:
July 29th - July 31st: Portlaw, Ireland @ All Together Now 2022
Sept. 2nd - 4th: Stradbally, Ireland @ Electric Picnic 2022