Name Your Sorrow offers catharsis, honesty and exposure. It’s no mystery as to what this album is about. Loss of youth, heartbreak and lessons learnt are contained within 12 tracks, in a raw and unrestrained monstrosity of potent emotion.
Finding themselves in a place they haven’t been before, no longer cloaked in the invincibility of being new nor the precocity of youth, Pillow Queens allow themselves to be free of burden, ignoring previous expectations set for them and going forward totally unafraid.
In every crack and crevice of this record, we find intense experiences, pockets of heartbreak and hazy choruses of loss, putting together a tapestry of pain and yearning, second-guessing and passion for something that may never be found. When speaking about the inspirations for this album, they came from an unlikely range of media, one such influence being the poem ‘Atlantis’ by the Irish poet Eavan Boland, in which the poet tries to find a specific word; “to convey that what is gone is gone forever and never found.”
There is nothing to hide behind anymore, this album is a blank landscape, blatant in its pain; “You don’t have to scratch the surface too much to see what these songs are about”, offers Pamela Connolly, (Lead and backing vocals, rhythm guitar, bass) while Sarah Corcoran (Lead and backing vocals, rhythm guitar, bass) likens it to physical experiences that are painful up to a point, but then “you get used to the pain and it has a positive inward effect.”
The shift in tone and sound of this album is apparent, yet this is not to say that the band have softened or is distancing themselves from their previous music. But one reason for this new experimentation in sound could be down to new-found collaborator Collin Pastore from Nashville. Pastore has produced boygenius, Lucy Dacus and Illuminati Hotties and assisted Pillow Queens in relearning the songwriting process. Holing up for three weeks at Analogue Studios in Newry, it quickly became obvious that the change in scenery and personnel was affecting the sound positively.
With Name Your Sorrow, Pillow Queens have shown a vulnerability that you can only gain through lived experience and leave us with the overarching question of, Will we ever live so intensely again?
Pillow Queens: Name Your Sorrow – Out 19th April 2024 (Royal Mountain Records)
Queens – Heavy Pour (Official Video) (youtube.com)
Meg is a proud Mancunian and Music Journalist. She started out by writing press releases for bands in her free time, but now runs her own website Dyrti which she plans to expand in the near future. She loves Lester Bangs and Tony Wilson and has interviewed bands such as Cabbage, Oceans On Mars and Adult Cinema. You will more often than not find her somewhere in the Northern Quarter.
