FEATURE: Spotlight: Sarah Kinsley — Music Musings & Such

FEATURE:

Spotlight

Sarah Kinsley

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THERE is a fair bit to discuss…

when it comes to New York artist Sarah Kinsley. Her E.P., The Fall, came out last year; The King arrived earlier this year. They are exceptional works that highlight an amazingly talented artist whose sound and vision is like nobody else’s. I would advise everyone to check out but of those E.P.s – in addition to the rest of Kinsley’s work. There are some articles I want to bring in to give us more information about the amazing Kinsley. I will also drop in a review for The King. First, DIY introduced her back in June:

“Hailing from NYC, she recently released her alt-pop-gem fuelled new EP ‘The King’, so we sent her over some qs to find out even more about her…

Describe your music to us in the form of a Tinder bio.
Free. Growing. Changing. Looking for another to be vulnerable with.

What’s your earliest musical memory?
Driving with my cheeks pressed against the windows of my dad's old car, alternating between my parents’ CDs and mine. That, or when I had just started learning the piano and would yearn to play more than just scales up and down everyday.

Who were some artists that inspired you when you were just starting out (and why)?
I think my music was an odd sort of synergy of a lot of artists and genres. I go through phases of music sometimes, but at the beginning, I was pulling elements from all sorts of inspirations. Carole King, and the way she became one with the piano. Ella Fitzgerald, in the ways her voice could just pour every drop of emotion out of you. Beach House, those synths, those goddamn synths! Cocteau Twins, that feeling of transporting to another world. Kate Bush, the goddess of production. At the start, I was pulled by all of these artists, in all directions. And I'd like to think that there's hints and specks of all of them somewhere in my music.

You live in New York! What do you think of the music scene there at the moment?
The music scene is slowly but surely coming alive again. It's an exciting time to be here. I think like the rest of the city and the people here, there's a wide sense of reawakening that's occurring all around in terms of music and entertainment and being able to experience live shows with strangers once again.

Are there any other artists breaking through at the same time as you that you take inspiration from?
I don't know if I can say we're breaking through simultaneously, but there are a great deal of underrated artists in my eyes whose music really deserves to be at the forefront of pop, or indie, or alternative. Lately, my musical heart belongs to Orla Gartland. I love everything about her recent music and the way she lets me scream and run and dance. I've been a follower of Yenkee for a while. Arlo Parks is so so incredible, although she's getting quite big now.. Nick Leng, Fenne Lily, Okay Kaya…

If people could take away one thing from your music, what would it be?
I'd hope people take away a feeling. A true, genuine, individual feeling. My biggest wish when I'm making music is that a record evokes something in you, it strikes something in your core, in your soul. That feeling is divine when it happens, it's like we're speaking directly to each other. And then suddenly the music is more than just me, it's more than an artist and an audience, it's a language, it's our little secret. So I really hope it just makes you feel something”.

There has (rightly) been a lot of excitement around Sarah Kinsley and her music. EUPHORIA.. spoke to her earlier in the year. In addition to highlighting the track, Karma, they also delved into her production talents and her use of the social media platform, TikTok:

“What’s the story behind “Karma”?

I like to think it’s a story of two worlds revealing themselves to me. The song was born out of a moment of frustrating writer’s block. Hardly unique, I think, just another voice memo of repetitive rhymes, things that have already been said. But there’s a moment where I finally reach this odd realization, where I’m combing through these two worlds. One of superstition, one of intuition. I was questioning big notions, fate, destiny, chances, choices. Wondering what our place is in any of it, or if there’s no control left to us, if everything’s meant to happen, if it’s all been decided already. And that inability to know, the terrifying truth behind superstitions, as scary as it was, was something I just wanted to dance to. Something I wanted to scream and cry to and move to. That’s what “Karma” was born out of.

Do you find that lyrics or melodies come to you easier when songwriting?

It’s funny whenever I approach this question. I seem to answer it differently every time. It depends on the moment. Sometimes there’s a story that’s yearning to be told. Some sort of experience, an epiphany that can only be contextualized through language. But sometimes that same feeling, that epiphany, has the opposite sort of arrival. The emotion is so strong that it can only be appropriately born through melody, through the limitless possibilities that melody gives us. So I guess, both.

What do you think is the biggest lesson you learned when creating your EP, The Fall?

The EP in its creation was an entire act of learning how to fall. Of being vulnerable with myself in silence and in music. It was exhausting at times, really, and endlessly frustrating. Vulnerability is such a fleeting moment. It’s incredibly hard to capture, let alone fully submerge yourself into. Writing with the intent to be vulnerable was definitely something I learned, although I’m not sure if I can say it’s a lesson I’ve fully learned quite yet. It’s something that has to be nourished, I think, and lived with. I don’t know if I’ll ever know it fully, but I think I’m on the path to getting there. That’s something that’s really stuck since the EP. I’ve been trying to keep it with me ever since then and it’s undeniably a part of “Karma” and new music on the way. Falling into myself and my thoughts is an endless love, as fleeting as it may feel.

Who are some artists that influence you that we might hear in your future music?

Fleetwood Mac. Cocteau Twins. ABBA. Arlo Parks. Carole King. Kate Bush. Beach House. Recently I’ve been told there are many hints of Maggie Rogers or Chloe x Halle, Mitski, Phoebe Bridgers. My idols. They’re all just absolute geniuses in my eyes”.

Prior to coming to a review for the incredible E.P., The King, I wanted to source an interview where Kinsley discusses it. Guitar Girl Magazine featured a stunning Alt-Pop artist who explored her E.P. more and was asked if there was a particular song from The King that meant the most:

“You recently released a new EP, The King. Share with us a little about the album — inspiration, songwriting and recording process, and what fans can expect?

It’s the ultimate tribute to youth. The EP was a storm of lyrics and harmonies that came out right before and after I turned 20 last July. I was terrified of the new decade, THE decade of a lifetime, to let go of the past peripheral of innocence and blissful teenage ignorance. Everything was spinning and changing and I needed to create something for myself, or rather, for the essence of myself I was leaving behind.

The songwriting process came as it always does for me: in bursts and blossoms of inspiration. I’d be sitting by my window, driving in fields, feeling my feet in the sand, staying up to watch the sun, dancing in the rain. Lyrics came and went, and the ones that were the truest seemed to stick with me. I think the process really began to weave itself together across songs as I continued to live life up to that day of turning 20.

The recording process was the greatest thing I’ve ever done. Four of the songs were produced right here in my bedroom, either at my parent’s home or here in New York. “Karma,” sparkling synths in the summer, came so freely. That song was so perfectly simple and delicate and had such potential to grow beyond just indie pop. “Over + Under,” as I hit my furniture and cups on my table. That was the most exciting song to produce — I was creating sounds that were entirely my own. No one could recreate exactly what or how I had done it. “I’m Not A Mountain” was days spent in front of a microphone, layer after layer of improvising the violin and viola parts as I was recording. “Caught Up In A Dream,” elegant and raw, just me, a mic, and a grand piano. “The King” was an incredible experience that I was lucky to have with producer Jake Aron. Two days, ten hours each, in his studio in Brooklyn, experimenting with sounds, doubling vocals, and bouncing ideas off of one another as the song grew and grew and only got bigger. I loved every bit of the process of making this EP.

Is there a particular single that speaks to you?

It would be sacrilegious to choose just one. They all speak for me, these singles on the EP. They collectively tell this journey, this path to becoming the King. I love the way each track is aligned and placed on the record, especially “I’m Not A Mountain.” She lies at the middle of the album, undoubtedly at the centerpiece of the whole. That song is probably the most raw, most intimate I’ve ever been in music. It’s a cry of release, of accepting doubt and pain and flaw and selfishness and everything that makes me not a mountain, but human. I really love having that song placed in the center of the EP.

What message do you want to convey to listeners through your music?

My biggest wish when I’m making music is that a record evokes something in you, it strikes something in your core, in your soul. That feeling is divine when it happens, it’s like we’re speaking directly to each other. And then suddenly the music is more than just me, it’s more than an artist and an audience, it’s a language, it’s our little secret. The thing is though, I’m not sure what that message exactly is. I think that’s the beauty of it. We listen to this music and live our lives to it, and interpret it as we choose to. Maybe that’s the message – that the music makes us truly alive, it lets us come into that exact nature and core of who we want to be”.

There is a final interview that I am keen to include. Prior to that, NME’s review of The King is worth quoting. Even though it is quite a short work, there is so much intimacy, emotional and impact throughout the five songs:

“It’s an emotionally affecting reality that the New York-based Sarah Kinsley confronts on ‘The King’ EP, an immersive collection of indie-pop songs that evoke how momentous it feels to stand at the edge of adulthood. The sublime title track – which the singer-songwriter and producer has previously said captures “everything about what it means to turn 20” – draws from the exact moment where fear turns to clarity: as she sings of ageing and irreversible change, her crushingly beautiful voice warmly hugs the lilting melody, as though she is comforting herself. But the optimistic pre-chorus – “So tell me/Before we get older/Let’s do everything” – suggests hope, not self-pity.

The rest of the EP’s songs share a similar kind of generous intimacy. Kinsley is direct and visceral in her storytelling, she unearths quiet revelations that are threaded together by her own crisp production. ‘Over + Under’ is a personal disclosure of desire: “I think of you as the wind catches onto the breeze/Pulling me/You are the ocean of endless possibility”. As she delivers, her vocal shifts between a whisper and a gentle timbre, swirling and multiplying into layered harmonies, indulging in its own malleability.

Hypnotising and majestic, the piano-led ‘I Am Not A Mountain’ is elevated by ripples of dramatic strings, while Kinsley’s delicate playing is filled with cinematic swells and classical inflections. But it’s on the flickering ‘Karma’, the EP’s most upbeat cut, where the music gets more idiosyncratic; lyrically, Kinsley wonders if she’s ever going to figure things out, and she finds ways to make her home studio set-up – here, she makes sounds from inanimate objects such as light switches and glasses – sound swaggering and enormous. It’s an offering of casual magic.

‘The King’ is a brief effort that clocks in at little over 20 minutes long, but it’s meticulously crafted and, at times, oddly euphoric. Kinsley morphs the EP’s short timespan into a genuinely moving reminder that, even in times of uncertainty and confusion, a new beginning is something to be cherished”.

Just prior to wrapping up, there is an interview from The Forty-Five that adds new layers and dimensions when it comes to explaining and spotlighting the music of Sarah Kinsley. She is both modern and classic. Someone who embraces TikTok and new Pop artists, Kinsley also has a love of Classical music and its disciplines:

“In an age where producers at any age can access the sonic equivalent of the Library of Alexandria from the comfort of their bedroom, Kinsley found renewed pleasure in sampling organic sounds: “I got obsessed with the fact that no one else could make that sound. You can hit your table or you could hit my table, but the way that you hit it isn’t the same. This sound is completely mine.”

Hitting a table is a deceptively simple way of describing Sarah Kinsley’s music, when she produces polyrhythmic tapestries driven by feeling, with lush textures that gently unfurl. There are clear influences and comparisons – a Fleetwood Mac-style drum fill opens ‘Karma’ and ‘Over + Under’ swoons among synth beds like Maggie Rogers, with the raw vocal power of Sharon Van Etten – but Kinsley manipulates sound to the point where it’s completely hers; in one instance, sampling her voice until it glides just like a violin. Her new EP, ‘The King’, doesn’t stick to one style but the songs remain connected through subtle threads, with a stadium-ready heart on their sleeve.

It’s where the rigour of classical music and theory meets an unabashed love of pop music. Raised on her parents’ U2 and Abba cassettes, Taylor Swift, and the odd Hannah Montana CD – “I honestly think a lot of indie-pop has taken inspiration from those!” – Kinsley used her classical piano training to compose huge orchestral pieces, alongside an occasional Natasha Bedingfield cover. There were years of “failing miserably”, enduring hours of “incredibly boring music theory” but it only made her fall harder: “Having so much passion to love and hate certain parts of something, drew me to it even more.”

Kinsley doesn’t hide this passion out of false modesty. Using TikTok as her virtual venue, she dances to her latest tracks, imbued with an infectious and refreshing excitement for her own creation. “I’m glad that it feels refreshing and not so weird to see me going through an out-of-body experience on my phone!” she says in relief. “I get embarrassed when friends watch my videos in front of me but when I made ‘Over + Under’, I just couldn’t stop moving to it – like it was touching different parts of my mind. Why would people release music that they’re not head over heels in love with?!”

The sweeping period pieces share the same sensibility as Kinsley’s music, intricate narratives vigorously yearning for something in the “oceans of endless possibility”. Just like these particular sentiments only communicated via film, Kinsley has feelings that can only be expressed through music: “I was writing this song where I was mad at someone and jealous that they could live such an easy life, while I was stuck with all the hurt they’d given me. I talked about it with people but I didn’t feel like that conversation was really done until it became music,” she says. “Until it was expressed as something independent from me”.

Go and follow the sensational Sarah Kinsley. With some remarkable work under her belt and a growing fanbase, she is an artist to look out for. Even though it is early days in terms of her career, things look very bright. The N.Y.C. artist is someone who is going to be…