Sorcha Durham has announced that she will release All I Wanted , a four-track EP of exquisitely-crafted ambient pop songs. All I Wanted is the debut solo project from the former Walking On Cars frontwoman – now a hotly-tipped solo artist in her own right.
To mark the announcement, Sorcha Durham shares a new single from the EP called ‘Heart & Soul’ . Sorcha solidifies her atmospheric pop sound on ‘Heart & Soul’. Her voice is sweet and breathy over contemplative synth before becoming both physically and emotionally moving. “I gave it all and more,” she sings with a piercing melancholy. The overwhelming build at the end of the track will have you ready to dance out your whole heart and soul.
All I Wanted marks a new chapter for an artist who’s already found immense success on an international level. As a hugely successful Irish band on a global scale, Walking On Cars’ 2016 debut album Everything This Way went to number 1 on the Official Irish Albums Chart After a triple platinum selling single (‘Speeding Cars’), a successful second album (Colours reached no. 2 in the Irish Album Charts in 2019) and sold out shows all over the world, the band decided to call it a day in early 2020, leaving fans with a final EP called Clouds .
After a deep breath, Sorcha decided to take some time to mould her own artistic vision. “Making music is a fundamental part of my being so I naturally turned to that to help me process everything,” she says.
Although she comes from a background with a rich traditional music heritage (both her parents are uilleann pipers and her first instrument is the piano), Sorcha has always had an interest in synthesis. That in mind, she enrolled in a music production course and this gave her the technical foundation to start creating the music she wanted to make.
“ Combining the organic sound of the piano and my voice with electronic elements like vintage synths and Drum machines is what really excites me,” Sorcha says. Going solo and writing her own songs without the band is a whole new challenge – one that she says she finds both refreshing and slightly daunting. “These songs are my first chance to tell my own story,” she says.
Gathering all the gear they could find, Sorcha and her boyfriend, Ben, who she produced this EP with, set up shop in the spare room. They spent countless nights writing and re-arranging until they got to the core of Sorcha’s vision. Over a year of postponed studio dates later, the whole project was finished at home. The only thing missing was ‘real piano’ so they shipped off to Cork to record the final touches with Christian Best in Monique Recording Studios along with some live drums played by Alex Ridley (Dáithí, Houseplants).
What came out of the process is a collection of tracks full of heartache, anger and hope. Durham shared her first solo single, ‘Fireside’ , in November 2022. The track was praised by Nialler9 for its ‘ambient pop mood’. 2023 is set to be a watershed year for Durham; The Irish Times listed her as an artist to look out for this year, and she was tipped as Hot for 2023 by Hot Press.
Having found a new lease for musical life, Sorcha Durham already working on the next batch of songs and is ready to take on the world again.
Speaking about the video, which was shot in The Green Room in her native Dingle, Sorcha Durham says: “I asked Luke, a friend of mine to get involved in the video for ‘Heart and Soul’. I’ve known him for years and he directed a lot of the biggest Walking On Cars videos so I knew I was in good hands. We shot the video in The Green Room in Dingle. It’s Ben, my fiancée’s bar so we had free rein of the place for the day. It’s a really cool venue with loads of vintage lamps and patterned wallpaper so it was the perfect backdrop to create something beautiful. Ben played synths and a friend, Aaron, played drums. It’s great to be able to work with people you know because everyone is relaxed and you can have a bit of craic.”
