“I never would have been able to get this record down if I had been finding [its subjects] as heavy as I had in previous years.”
From there, the record took shape quickly, and it soon became clear that it was more than just a debut album. Instead, it formed a patchwork of childhood memories, shaped by the experience of growing up with a father living with addiction. While EMDR therapy had already helped her process much of it, writing the record allowed her to revisit those memories with distance, bridging the gap between memory and acceptance. “It was about exploring it to the nth degree so I could kind of let it go. I would have never been able to get this record down if I had been finding it as heavy as I had in previous years,” she reflects.
This mindset filters through the record’s lyrics. Take the self-affirmation in ‘How Can I?’ or the album’s final moments, where she quietly announces her departure: “I’ve already done my time / I’m going to walk into the garden / And say my last goodbye”. Slowly but surely, the album became less about individual moments of pain and more about the collective process of letting go and moving on. She realised that while she couldn’t change the past, she could change how she thought about it. She explains: “I didn’t want it to be like a ‘screw you’, like, ‘hate you’. I was coming from a place of ‘I just need to be okay and move past this’.”
At the same time, she began widening her musical frame of reference. “I was consciously listening to albums by women. Cate Le Bon, Weyes Blood… I listened to Joni Mitchell for the first time! I thought: ‘What is going on, that I’ve got to be this age and not listened to a Joni Mitchell record all the way through?’” she exclaims. It was the first step to reducing her impostor syndrome. It also gave her permission to write smaller, quieter songs without feeling like she was being too “feminine” or “vulnerable”.
Then came the instruments: “I’m just so sick of guitar,” she laughs, reflecting on the time. “I’m not bored of all guitar music; I’m bored of me and guitar.” Looking for a way out, she bought a £60 flute on Amazon and taught herself how to play it. It was another way of refusing the habits she’d fallen into. “I was like, ‘I can play a recorder, I’ll be able to play this’. A flute is actually so much harder to play than a recorder!” Encouraged by producer Mike Lindsey, the flute quickly became central to the record, appearing on every track.
The last thing she needed was confidence, a shift that happened in great part thanks to Mike. “He doesn’t need everything to be perfect, so I just instantly felt like it was okay that I play many things at a sort of average level,” she reflects fondly. “Honestly, it’s the first time I’ve not felt like an impostor in a studio.”
Thus, ‘Move On With the Year’ was born. What began as a practical attempt to get an album finished became a farewell to old habits, borrowed voices, and a lesson in self-belief. “As a result of trusting my instinct, things worked out really well.”
‘Move On With the Year’ is out now via Moshi Moshi.
