Rachel Sermanni
Rachel Sermanni received widespread praise for her EP Black Currents earlier this year and now she is back with her debut full length album Under Mountains.
I caught up with the singer-songwriter to chat about the new album, the development of her sound and what lies ahead.
- The release of you new album Under Mountains is now just a handful of weeks away so what can we expect from the new collection of tracks?
They are a new collection in the sense that Under Mountains is new and no one has heard it before bur the songs themselves have been played over the last few years by me. I wrote the first of the songs - not with any intention of it being on an album - when I was in school.
And it has spanned up to more recent months and so the album itself it has spanned quite a few years if you count all of the years of the writing. So the concept is really lots of different emotions and life situations.
- Some tracks such as Breathe Easy has almost a poetic feel to it while The Fog is more of a haunted sounding track so how would you describe the sound of the album?
Having listened to it all of the way through I know that sound wise the feelings that you get from it is it feels quite heavy and melancholy in a lot of aspects.
There are some really cool sounds with the soundscapes and the instrumentation - I am really happy with the sound of it as it feels very ethereal and there are lots of subliminal things that we have put in.
Lyric wise they all follow the lyrics and the instrumentation; Breathe Easy being quite a hopeful song has a really nice bass to it and it is a lovely kind of form. However The Fog is much darker and it has a jagged arrangement.
- Your EP Black Currents was received well earlier this year so how have you found the early response to the new album?
It has been a lovely response so far. The circle that helped put it together have got copies and the press are starting to get copies and everybody so far has been very positive about it.
You have got to brace yourself when you put something out as you don’t expect everyone to really love it but I am really glad that it is out (laughs). It has been a long process and the whole album making process has been more complex and elongated than I ever imagined.
The amount of people and hands that it has taken to get it onboard and lots of set backs - just normal human things - but a project always takes longer than you expect.
Also writing wise and creative wise I am excited and thankful that they are being released and the songs have a way of escape now. I haven’t written for a while because of how busy I have been and I am excited to continue as I know that every song of the past has been represented quite beautifully.
- You have mentioned that the album has been many years in the process so I was wondering what has taken so long?
I started gigging when I left school, that was about four years ago, and the process of me starting a career started then I suppose. It has always been a very cautious journey… I said yes to many things but when it came to the business said or to the side of releasing things I just had this visceral feeling that I wasn’t ready a lot of the time.
And I am very thankful for that because I have been able to develop the voice and develop the songs as well as meeting other musicians to play with your music and so it has been a huge process.
The first successful recording that I did for an EP was for Bossy Fish and that was instigated after I thought ‘why does recording have to be so complex?’ ‘Why do we have to go over thing two or three times to get the perfect vocal?’
So I invited my friends to a shack in the woods and we set up the recording apparatus and put on a fire and recorded four songs. It was really spontaneous and we had a big party and it lasted until 4am - it was one of the greatest experiences of my life and I am very proud of that first recording.
That awakened to me to the fact that you can do anything and make it sound nice as long as you do what you want to do and you follow that. So after that we went a little bit more professional with Black Currents and now the album.
But a lot of the takes were live and the feeling was the important part rather than the technical aspects. I had a really good team as Ian Grimble was producing and Nick was doing engineering while all of the musicians were really talented.
- As you say the album is produced by Ian Grimble so how did that partnership come around? And what were you looking for in your producer for this record?
I was looking for somebody who… maybe it was a pride thing but I was always so wary because Bossy Fish had no producer and I was like ‘we can do it on our own’ (laughs).
I think it was on meeting Ian I realised what a producer is supposed to do - I hadn’t had too much experience with producers. A lot of the time it is a representation of the people recording it than you that comes out and their influence can be too over-bearing for your own feelings but what he did was just sit back.
He made me feel like a lot of the ideas were my own but I am sure that they weren’t. He just had a really quiet and passive way about him and yet when he needed to be he was assertive and kept me in line.
The album recording didn’t go as smoothly as I had just got back from a really long tour, the day I got back we went straight into recording.
Afterwards I went down to London to do the production stuff with Ian and I listened to my vocal and realised that my vocal performance was dead (laughs) because I was so tired. He just sat me down and was like ‘Rachel get your act together’ and I was like ‘yeah ok’.
So a lot of the vocals were re-done to make them better and truthful rather than just exhausting sounding. I met him through label Communion as I am friends with lots of people at the label but I not on their label.
- I was reading that some of your music has been inspired by Scottish poet Robert Burns so what is it about his work that inspires you?
I am so inspired by so many poets but Burns is just incredible and anything that I have sung or read of his is so evocative.
His images are beautiful and he is a true romantic in the sense that I have never cringed at anything that he has written - you truly believe that he is in love again. I am very fond of his work and I love to sing his stuff. But at the same time I would never say that my stuff is like his - I would challenge anyone to find too much of a similarity.
But he is great. I was actually reading a book in a coffee shot recently and I was so profoundly moved by all these poems and then I realised that it was the lyrics from the band The Cure - I had never really listened to The Cure but having read this book by chance I was like ‘oh my gosh’ there was a real synchronicity in the way that he wrote.
- So how did you get into the music in the first place? When did you first pick up a guitar?
I first picked up a guitar when I was in secondary school when I was about fourteen. It was one of the only instruments that was just simply picked up and played and it is ironic that it has come to be the one that I play the most.
I would love to get better at it as I have never had proper lessons - that would be good. I have always been surrounded by music and musicians - not necessarily my family but my dad taught me Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on the whistle and then I learnt the fiddle in primary school.
There was always encouragement in school and so I think that that is where it did come from. And I am lucky to be in so many different musical circles; so I have the traditional world but I am friends with lots of people who are jazz musicians in Glasgow.
I wouldn’t be able to put myself in any of their circles as such but they accept me (laughs) - I can stick my feet in each circle and feel happy and content to listen and play along when I can.
All my friends in my village they were really into people I never really appreciated until I left school such as Bjork and Bright Eyes - there were always playing stuff like that and I just half listened.
I was very inspired by the independence of these musicians and the fact that they weren’t what we were hearing on the radio but I wasn’t so profoundly affected until I left school and I realised how exciting that was.
- You have been on the festival circuit this summer so how did you find that?
It has been lovely. I was on the circuit last year as well but it has just been getting busier and busier and it has been great. This year has been nice because we have been doing some smaller festivals in the deep dark corners of Britain such as Nova Festival.
I can’t really think of a bad gig this year as they have all been good. The travelling is slightly more difficult as you have to find places to sleep - it’s not difficult but you have to learn to uproot yourself and I am still learning to do that.
- And you are about to embark on a tour of your own so how excited are you to get back out on the road and perform these new tracks live?
I am very excited as I want to do a good job and there is so little time now. I am currently doing something for the album - I am doing tiny video clips to introduce the songs - but I just wanted to make it as good a show as possible; from behind the scenes to the album and the videos on line for line.
We want to make people feel intimate and comfortable in the gigs and I feel that that is going to be really exciting and I want to do a good job.
- Finally what's next for you?
Just this massive tour and I am hoping that I will get to spend some time at home. I have got a violin and a mandolin and so I am going to take them on tour with me and practice and busk and get better.
Hopefully I will write some more - I haven’t done it for a while and so I am interested in what will happen there as I have been listening to some different stuff from usual.
I am basically busy touring UK and Europe until December time and then I will hopefully get some time at home and it will probably be busy in the New Year as well.
Rachel Sermanni - Under Mountains is released 15th October
Click here to pre-order Rachel Sermanni - Under Mountains album
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw