Resurrection, Music & More with Saoirse Miller

There’s a vivid sense of etherealism throughout your songbook. The sounds are experimental with truly poetic elements of beauty. Where did your fascination with your music style begin?

Wow, thank you! I’ve been writing songs for as long as I can remember. As a kid I would always write songs as a means of escape, like world building. I would write to create these magical places in my head, so when I sang I could go to that other reality and escape everything for a bit. I spent a lot of time in Mizen Head, a place that is so rich in Irish folklore and magic. I always felt most myself there, and felt so heartbroken and out of place whenever I had to come home, it still feels like grieving when I leave. I always yearned for the feeling I got when I was there, so I think that’s how I became so fascinated with Irish lore and stories as a means to connect with myself, which I still always try to reflect in my lyrics and song themes. I think lyrically and sonically I’m always trying to create a means of escape to a different world, it’s always rooted in some sort of emotion or story I’m trying to convey.

Sonically I’ve been influenced by so many different artists. One of my first favourite bands from a really young age was Florence and the Machine, her albums Lungs and Ceremonials particularly. I was 8 when Lungs came out, I just remember being totally entranced by the natural and ethereal sounds and lyrics of the entire record. Then Ceremonials flipped some sort of switch in my brain when I was 11, the darkness of that album just changed the way I think and I became completely consumed by it. The fascination with this darkness and themes of death and love and magic kind of became the catalyst for my music style. I found that the music was describing the way I felt inside but I could never articulate properly, it was an outlet for me. Then later discovering artists like Grouper, Lisa O’Neill, Fleet Foxes, Bombay Bicycle Club, I just thought this is what I want to do, I need to make music to get everything out.

Behind every track, there’s always a story. Sometimes it’s as simple as playing a chord and other times the inspiration comes from a deeper more meaningful source. What was your inspiration behind your latest ethereal escape, “Resurrection”

I was going through a really shit time when I wrote Resurrection. I was really lost, I felt completely disconnected from everything and everyone I knew. I really liked this guy and things didn’t work out well and I was blaming myself, I got so low. The song is really just me trying to describe how lost I was and how much I hated myself. At the same time, I’d gotten so used to that feeling that I was quite nonchalant about it, which is why the lyrics are pretty miserable but the delivery is kinda laid back, I’m hiding behind that vocoder and behind Cheesmore’s optimistic, poppy beat.

I’m a very spiritual person and a practising pagan, but the loneliness I was feeling at the time I wrote this felt bigger than anything I believed in, and I didn’t know what to do, no ceremony or rite could get me out of it.The lyrics have that spiritual imagery in the chorus and the title. The line “Ceremonials mean nothing when I had all my faith in you” kind of sums up the whole idea of the song for me. It’s me begging for some sort of Resurrection from the dark place I was in.