Dublin-born singer-songwriter Sorcha Richardson returns with the announcement of her much-anticipated new album Draw The Outline – out September 11th.
Alongside the album announce, Richardson has also shared a warm and ruminative new single about crowded loneliness titled ‘Illinois Again‘, out now.
Having debuted some new material last month in a blistering performance for Other Voices at St. James Church in Dingle, Richardson gave fans a first taste of the album proper with her confident and contemplative single ‘Grenadine’, which earned plaudits from the likes of NME, Consequence, DIY and more.
Wonderland stated:
“absolutely irresistible. Returning for the first time this year, the Irish singer-songwriter holds the kind of emotional gravitas that steers you wherever it chooses, delightfully delicate and musically thoughtful.”
The new single “Illinois Again” sits within Draw The Outline as one of its more outward-facing songs, but one that gently folds levity into loneliness, and motion into quiet reflection. It begins with an attempt to capture something light and extrinsic.
A fun moment on tour that began twisting towards uncertainty. What starts as a “fun road trip song” gradually reveals a more existential undercurrent: the paradox of being surrounded by people and activity yet still feeling a sense of isolation.
Speaking on the single, Richardson says:
“Illinois Again is a bittersweet song about connection and loneliness. It’s doing the thing you’ve always dreamed of doing, surrounded by friends, and yet still feeling an undercurrent of isolation and not fully understanding why.”
With Draw The Outline, Sorcha Richardson leans into the softness of abstraction. Originally from Dublin, Richardson spent nearly a decade living in New York before returning to Ireland, eventually moving from Dublin to West Kerry a couple of years ago.
The latter is a place shaped by quiet, at the foot of a mountain and a short walk from the sea, where life moves at a slower pace. In that stillness, the album gradually took form. It was, as she puts it, “a nice place to be.” Moving outside of the metropolis noise, Richardson discovered that life’s fervency exists in a different form.
Musically, it might play at lower volume, while poetically, it reveals itself in unassuming moments like swimming in August sunlight or illuminating car rides – fleeting scenes that glow quietly within.
Draw The Outline finds confidence, peace, and even a quiet sense of hope in abstraction. There’s something defiant and profound in its refusal to weave the seams tightly, instead embracing openness as a way of staying present, attentive, and alive to what unfolds. It doesn’t seek to define so much as to hold space, for uncertainty, for contradiction, for the quiet expansion of thought.
Lonely at times but never without warmth, the album carries a gentle insistence on empathy, and on the possibility that not knowing can be its own kind of clarity.
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