Irish duo Saint Sister bring their Celtic ‘atmosfolk’ stylings to Australia for the first time this week off the back of their debut album, ‘Shape Of Silence’.
Their debut Australian tour include performances at Mullum Music Festival, and one half of the duo Morgan MacIntyre says she and bandmate Gemma Doherty have been overwhelmed with the international response to Saint Sister. “We cannot wait, because neither of us have been to Australia before so we are so, so excited,” Morgan says.
“It's the start of your summer, which will be amazing because I can’t wait to get some warm sun and extend our summer a bit and get out of the Irish weather. The fact we're even coming to Australia on our first album tour is not lost on us.
“We’re really excited to be able to have the privilege of coming out and playing to people, and the fact that some people might come to the shows as far away as Australia is an amazing feeling for us, so we can't wait.”
Morgan and Gemma released ‘Shape Of Silence’ in early October, three years after their first EP ‘Madrid’ introduced Saint Sister’s blend of ‘60s folk-inspired electro-pop.
“It’s nice to see the album, which we worked so hard on and for so long, it’s nice to bring it to life and to let those songs breathe in a different way, in a more real way,” Morgan says of playing the new album on their recent US tour.
“Also just to share them with people because it was just me, Gemma and Alex [Ryan] – who produced the songs with us – for a long time, only the three of us had heard the songs and it felt like the album lived in our heads only.
“So it’s really nice to have them out in the world and other people are getting to hear them. It’s also a nice feeling bringing them to life and playing them live; it’s a different kind of energy, so we've enjoyed that process of bringing them from the recording to the stage.”
Seeing their new album as bridging the gap between songs from ‘Madrid’ with more recent compositions, on ‘Shape Of Silence’ Morgan says each song forms part of an overarching conversation about isolation and self-realisation.
“At the start, the songs seem a little more upbeat than at the end of the record, and they're very conspiratorial and the first few songs I think take on this us-against-the-world mentality,” she says.
“They're very inquisitive and the narrator is constantly asking questions and trying to figure out something about the other person and defining themselves in relation to one other person.
“Then through the album you can see that narrative breaking down a bit and the way the narrator is defining him or herself is changing and becoming more fractured, and the songs to my mind become a little more lonely; they become less us-against-the-world and more me-against-the-world and more ‘how can I figure myself out and who am I in relation to everyone else?’.”
Saint Sister Tour Dates
Sat 10 Nov - Sydney Irish FestivalSun 11 Nov - Northcote Social Club (Melbourne)
Tue 13 Nov - The Lansdowne Hotel (Sydney)
17-18 Nov - Mullum Music Festival (Northern Rivers)
