Sorcha Richardson's track by track on intimate new album Draw The Outline

The third album from Sorcha Richardson, among the finest songwriters in Irish music today. Since her 2019 debut First Prize Bravery and 2022’s acclaimed Smiling Like an Idiot, the Dublin artist has built a reputation for sharp, emotionally precise writing, wrapping everyday heartbreak and hard-won clarity in warm, widescreen indie-pop.

Out on Faction and trailed by the single ‘Grenadine’, Draw The Outline, produced by Chris W Ryan, finds her writing at its most assured. Intimate, melodic and deeply felt, largely focusing on acoustic over synth or electric tones.

Sorcha shared a track-by-track on each song on Draw The Outline…

1. Sea Pink Moon

I wanted this to feel like the opening credits and really be a scene setter. The very first time I played the opening synth, it made me think of the wind howling on Ventry beach, where I would go to clear my head while writing the album. It was Chris’s idea for it to be the opening track, and we decided that very early on, which helped to shape the direction of the album. 

It started out as a demo I made with Hugo White (The Maccabees) and I finished it a few months later, after I came home from Inis Oírr. It’s sort of an existential song about finding deeper meaning in your life, and letting go of older ideas you might have had about who you are, or what you wanted. It’s really about small moments in life, and certain people around me, who make me feel like myself. 

2. Grenadine

Chris told me that when I initially asked him to produce the album, he had planned to say no because he was so busy with other projects. And then he heard this demo and it changed his mind haha. Thank god ! 

This is a song I wrote when life got a little rocky and it was a way to try and make sense of it. It was a collection of things that I knew to be true, when I didn’t understand much else. Sometimes things happen that make you question your beliefs or ideas and even your understanding of who your are to other people. Life can be cruel and hard to explain. So this was a song I wrote when I didn’t have the answers

The Space-Echo vocal FX that Chris added was a bit of a game changer and became something we used across the whole album. He even bought me one as an album wrap present <3 

3. Fake Venice 

I wrote this with my friend Bridie (aka SOAK). It’s maybe the most vulnerable song on the album? Kind of about acknowledging the effect somebody else has on you, and feeling almost embarrassed about that. I really wanted it to be quite beautiful and dreamy, and not too saccharine. It’s a blur of memories from Las Vegas and Venice and Dún Chaoinn.  It’s the first song I ever wrote with Bridie and made me realise very quickly what a great collaborator and songwriting accomplice they are!

4. Illinois Again 

The first song I started writing for the album. I really wanted it to feel like a road trip. Tunneling down the highway, no sign of stopping.  It’s about living your dream, but also the loneliness of chasing that dream. I wrote it after coming home from one of my favourite tours I’ve ever done, but also feeling sad at not being fully able to get out of my head while on that tour. It is a snapshot of some of the best memories I have from playing music with my friends – bleaching our hair in a motel in Virgina, getting caught in a blizzard in Denver and making snow angels in the hotel car park, playing our favourite songs for each other in the van, driving through Illinois. It’s about trying to hold on to those moments but also knowing you won’t be able to explain fully it to someone who wasn’t there, or even remember it accurately for yourself. 

5. Ellen Forever

Another song I wrote with SOAK. My friend Ellen asked me how writing for my album was going, and wondered what I was writing about given that I wrote my first album when I was leaving New York after nearly a decade, and I wrote my second album at the very start of a brand new relationship, two pretty pivotal moments in my life. She wondered what there was to write about now that I had (according to her) figured my life out.  This was probably the most confronting things Ellen could have asked me and sent me into a spiral about A – how to write an album and B – how much of yourself is the right about to share with the world. 

6. Dog’s Best Man

The first of two songs I made with James Vincent McMorrow, before I really knew what the album was going to be. We talked about there being this great dynamic shift between verse and chorus. The drums and guitars erupting and snapping back into place. 

It’s a song about unreliable narrators and the corruptive nature of fear.  It started out almost as a joke, after an encounter with my neighbours’ dog, but it became a song about ego, pride and fear, who we become when we are scared. Dog’s Best Man holds many of those themes together, oscillating between something very real and serious, and something full of humour. That’s where I found a lot of truth on this album. Somewhere between the confession and the joke. 

7. Adam (Pacing in the Park)

This is a pathetic breakup song for a relationship that never made it past the first drink. It’s a song for dating horror stories. I also made this with James the same day we did Dog’s Best Man. Ryan Hargadon came to the studio to play keys, but he also brought his clarinet and saxophone. We had some synths and Mellotron on the song, but it was all sounding a bit too dense, so before Ryan left we asked him to play clarinet on it instead, and it just totally changed the feeling of it, and ended up becoming a really important colour on the whole album.

8. The Orchard

This had so many forms. It was the song that definitely fought back the most as we worked on the album. I completely re-wrote the lyrics the night before recording it, awake at 2am in Chris’s spare room in Belfast. It’s kind of an uncomfortable one, but I think it’s important to be able to write about yourself as a very flawed character. This is about insecurity in a relationship and having no idea how to cope with that feeling. But also feeling grateful that both people in that partnership are deeply human and flawed. – I’m just as flawed as you. Thank god, cause there’s forgiveness and empathy in that.

9. Sunshine Season 

I started writing this with my friend Kevin Corcoran who plays keys in my band. I’m so glad it made it to the album. It has this weird tranquillised, sluggish feeling to it. Almost like on of those ”4am slowed down version” edits you find on YouTube. I wrote it about wishing I could live up to the idea of myself that I present to someone when I first meet them, but also being relieved that I don’t have to.

10. The Video 

I see this song both as an apology and an act of forgiveness. It’s a way of recommitting, now that you know each other (and yourselves better).  It’s sort of saying even if life’s a mess I’d rather try to navigate that mess with you than without you. A bit like Sea Pink Moon, it’s a way of remembering what’s important to you, and holding onto the small moments within it all that lift your spirits.

---

Buy Sorcha Richardson’s album Draw The Outline on vinyl here.

---

INSTORES:

11^th Sept – Spindizzy Records, Dublin, IRE
13^th Sept – The Commercial, Limerick, IRE
14^th Sept – Banquet Records, Kingston-Upon-Thames, UK
15^th Sept – Rough Trade Denmark Street, London, UK

LIVE:
30^th Sept – 4^th Oct – Salt Water Festival, Bundoran, IRE
25^th Oct – Aiteall Festival, Bantry, IRE
4^th Nov – Belfast Empire Music Hall, Belfast, UK
5^th Nov – Gleneagle INEC, Poulnamucky, IRE
6^th Nov – The Academy, Dublin, IRE
8^th Nov – Savoy Club and Venue, Cork, IRE
10^th Nov – Hoxton Hall, London, UK
12^th Nov – The Lodge at Deaf Institute, Manchester, UK