Never Mind
Sarah Kinsley on her upcoming album "Escaper"
The musician Sarah Kinsley grew up immersed in classical music, which shines through in her writing. One of the best examples is the grandeur in her song, “The King” which has been streamed over 50 million times. Kinsley is releasing her debut album this coming September titled “Escaper” exploring themes of grief, love, and friendship in her enchanting sound that marries the tones of classical with the sound of melodic pop. Singles from the upcoming album “Starling” and “Realms” have proved that “Escaper” will be a journey through an otherworldly album showcasing her storytelling of the fantastical world she’s created through her discography.
Never Mind had the opportunity to speak with Sarah and attend a press conference where she spoke about the creation of her debut and what’s to come. With her classical music background I was intrigued as to what classical composers have influenced her? She responded, “I think the composers who have stuck with me the longest have been Choplin, Ravel and Debussy, like the impressionists and the romantics of classical music. I just love what they did. I loved what they revolutionized about classical music and I loved the shift that sort of happened, I definitely have been influenced sort of by the tones and the overarching themes of what that music represents for a long time. That music is definitely a comfort zone for me.”
When it comes to the combination of the two Sarah shared how she views that classical music and pop music aren’t that different in structure, she stated “when I was growing up I would listen to so much radio, the mainstream pop songs are so similar in structure to classical music cause we talk about Sonata Form for example, you know exactly
what's going to happen because of the structure and I would argue pop music is the same thing… there’s a lot of different music that’s incorporating orchestras that incorporates the stylized way of a symphony almost and I love that so much just as the classical child in me but at least within my own music I get so much selfish love out of creating string arrangements, I think that there’s a lot of beautiful textual production that can happen when you merge the two, even putting strings over drums gives you this weird nostalgia and it captures the sensation that a lot of synths and other sounds cant. I think string instruments in general have a sort of ability to make you feel emotion that a lot of other instruments can’t and access very differently so yeah I have a lot of love for combining the two.”
Sarah opened up about the creative journey she went on while creating the album, “A huge part of this album is about the process of escape and what that looks like. I wrote the majority of the songs on this album while I was dealing with different forms of grief and loss in different ways to friendship, love and family. I think a huge theme of this album is who do you become when you need to escape, where do you go when you don’t want to exist in the real world anymore. The first half of this album is about this sort of imagined world of the places that we go to and I learned a lot about myself as a person who exists outside of my music and what I require from art and music in order for me to keep going in a healthy ways and I feel like the testament to music as the form of expression that is very necessary as a way to move through grief or a way to understand yourself, is very much held true to me. I learned a lot about the more vulnerable and darker sides of what moving through that process looks like but it was very needed for me, very refreshing to come out of that.” Working through grief and creating art from it that helps as an artist process those experiences but also with the power of music, will inevitably help others is a truly beautiful process.
She also shared what she hopes people take away from the album, “I think my biggest revelation with this album and what I’d hope people would carry while they listen to it is, the album is called escaper but my realization through making a lot of this music and through the story of the album is that escape is necessary, escapism is sort of a need for survival but at the end of the day there’s still something very beautiful about choosing to engage with the world and live in it and love it even with flaws and I feel like the sort of character that I was writing through or the person I’m inhabiting through this record kind of realizes that eventually like love is still worthy and humanity is worthy of our attention and our participation even with flaws and with darkness and it’s sort of sappy, but that’s the decision and final place I come to in the record like you are worthy of love and love is worthy of you like this sort of dual realization of love. “ Another example of this is in the single “Starling” she said, “Because this record is a lot about trying to accept love and understand it a huge part of that is like oh my god platonic love is one of the most sustaining things ever in my life.”
On that note of writing through a character and creating a full circle story within an album, what sparked this fascination with imaginary worlds and alternate realities in her music? She said, “I feel like I’ve been intrigued by that concept since my last EP “Ascension”, which was also inspired by another film, that quote from Céline Sciamma, who directed a Portrait of a Lady on Fire about, love and heartbreak hurts the way it does because the language you build between the two of you will never be spoken again, once you leave that relationship. That quote which is not even related or in the movie but it was very influential to me, when creating ascension and just the idea between two people there’s this whole universe of things and when you decide to leave that or have to leave that world that entire place is sort of left untouched this sort of wasteland of memories, inside jokes and things that you specifically would talk about and no one else would understand it’s very heartbreaking that concept was so strong for me and I wanted to continue it with escaper and when I was writing some of the initial songs for it I was intrigued by this idea that the immortality of there’s so many different versions of us if we had done other things so, there's a completely different reality of who you
become when you make certain decisions. If you spend too much of your life thinking about it’s like there’s these infinite realities of who you might be and, the idea of are you the right one, have you escaped to the right world are you presenting as the right person are you following the right path, for me as an over thinker and control freak that’s an insane thing to think about and insane concept to want to write about and so out of my own interest I think what does this mean and I think the fact how do we balance that we can imagine all of these worlds, and live in illusion and also we have to return to who we are and inhabit the body that we live in and the so-called real world that always intrigues me I think.” Films tend to be a frequent source of inspiration for Sarah, such as how that response was very reminiscent of the film Everything Everywhere All At Once, she also discussed the film Past Lives as a source of inspiration for escaper.
Sarah Kinsley is an artist that’s combining her love for multi-dimensional conversations with the very grounded experiences we face as humans into an array of songs that span different lifetimes and celebrate love in every form it comes. Be on the lookout for this otherworldly album “Escaper” September 6th.