Irish songwriter Clara Lindsey is on a creative streak. Today she’s releasing her second EP under the name Kynsy, Something To Do With Love, which follows up last year’s breakthrough Things That Don’t Exist EP.
Across the five tracks on the new release, Kynsy builds on the bold narrative-driven songwriting that sparked excitement last year, taking us into distinct emotional climates and heart-pounding moments with piercing clarity. Alongside co-producer Charlie Andrew, the Dubliner has brought new levels of sophistication to her sonic palette, adding emotional heft to her words.
Kynsy kindly agreed to take us track-by-track on Something To Do With Love, giving us illuminating back stories for each of these involving tracks.
01. “Point Of You”
“Point of You” is a dark, almost anti-pop song about dealing with rejection from someone you obsess over. I wanted the song to be sweet and almost childlike but have a really dark contrast and I aimed for that through the unusual production and glitching guitar sound as well the erratic drum beat. Most of the sounds on the record were all taken from my demo version that Charlie (my co-producer) then re-amped in the studio. The fact that we kept a lot of the production from my demo in the final track gave me a lot of confidence in my production ideas. The fly at the end of the track was something caught by a room mic at the end of the vocal take we decided to keep in!
02. “New Year”
The initial demo idea for “New Year” was written on new year’s eve very close to midnight as a family party was underway downstairs that I didn’t have much interest in showing my face for. At the time I had a real desire to celebrate the turn of the year by doing something creative. I had definitely been listening to a lot of Róisín Murphy around then which you can hear in the funky bass line at the start. It’s a song filled with characters at a new year’s eve party and I wanted to explore the idea of someone who is looking for meaning as the clock edges towards midnight and a new year is on the horizon.
03. “Simple Life”
“Simple Life” is me voicing my confusion around why things can be so hectic all the time. The second verse is almost like a message to a lover telling them that you need to take a break. Funnily enough there’s some saxophone on this track which was played by Charlie Andrew, my co-producer. He kept saying he felt the track needed saxophone and I kept laughing and didn’t understand what he was talking about until he laid it down on the track one day and he was actually right, the saxophone really works!
04. “Thumb Wars”
“Thumb Wars” is a song about an abusive relationship that happened in my teenage years, I sort of wrote it like a story of a girl who was having to learn the hard way about what an abusive relationship is and is then reflecting on it in the chorus in the present day.
It’s my favourite production on the EP. The synth at the start of the track really reminds me of something you’d hear on a Broadcast or Portishead track (two of my favourite bands growing up) and then the broken synth sound that comes in right before the chorus reminds me of Micachu and the Shapes, another one of my favourite bands.
The link section of this song was an old song I was working on that Charlie thought sounded interesting and put into the song, which was super cool, I don’t think it’s even in the same key. I also recorded the vocals for this under a blanket in the studio and was nearly eating the microphone I was so close in order to get that up close and personal vocal sound.
05. “Love Of Your Life”
The lyrics on this track are by far my favourite. I wanted to challenge myself with this song and really wanted to write a classic love song with simple lyrics I could be really proud of, I felt like I did the song justice!
At the time I was writing this and working on the demo I was also listening to a lot of jazz funk records as well and I wanted to capture that kinda fusion in the arrangement of this song, I really liked the idea of the organic jazzy elements with a nice mix of electronic instruments and experimentation, that’s why I kept the Arp and vocal slices in. There was also a string quartet on this song arranged by the terrific Will Gardener which was very cool as I never thought I’d be lucky enough to get real strings on one of my tracks.
Kynsy’s Something To Do With Love EP is out now.
