Interview with Sister John: ‘The new album traces a bit of history, a history of emotions’

Lo-fi lush Glasgow band, Sister John, will bring out their next single, ‘In My Place’, on 7 May, a gentle track about growing up, infused with the folky, dramatic soundscapes that we have come to expect from them.

Sister John comprises Amanda McKeown (vocals and guitar), Jonathan Lilley (guitar), Sophie Pragnell (drums) and Heather Phillips (violin/bass). They met via various musical projects in the city and have been playing together since 2016. McKeown picked the name ‘because it sounded right’: ‘When I picked it, I didn’t know whether it would be a solo thing or a band,’ she said. ‘I wanted a pseudonym and I liked the play on words, the male/female thing, it’s a bit ambiguous. We’re three women and a man, so people often assume it’s Jonathan and the three of us but that’s not where it comes from.’

‘In My Place’ is about growing up, according to McKeown: ‘Something I like to do is express a particular emotion,’ she said. ‘Here, it’s about those emotions growing up and knowing it’s your place and the reverberations of that growing older.’

As the song goes: ‘I was in my place but I’m pulled from the ground. Will you call me back when I’m not around? Take your hands, hold me like a bird. Keep my body in this world with yours.’

I tell her that her voice on this track reminds me a lot of Chrissie Hynde, although other reviewers have described them as being like The Beatles jamming with John Cale. “I understand that on this track. I absolutely love The Pretenders, I love Chrissie, she’s amazing. If I sound like her it’s because things just tumble out, it wasn’t intentional.’

‘It’s about capturing the raw emotion of something’

The track is the second single to be released from their upcoming third album due out on 31 July titled ‘I Am By Day’ which will also include a song of the same name: ‘It comes from the poem ‘Mrs. Brown’ by Rose Fyleman (an English writer and poet, 1877-1957). I loved it when I was little, it’s about moving in and out of your emotional history. There’s a line in the poem “The little girl I am by day goes very suddenly away”, it’s that lovely ambiguous thing again. She’s falling asleep and dreams about being a grown-up. It’s about your place in the world and whether you belong there or not. It’s about capturing the raw emotion of something, that joy as a child but also a sense of melancholy.’

Raw emotions are a common thread throughout the album: ‘The new album traces a bit of history, a history of emotions,’ she said. In March, they brought out the first single from the 10 track album, ‘How Can I Keep it Alive?’, which is essentially about the things that keep you grounded: ‘There are certain things that are anchors in your life, they could be hobbies, nature, or something else that you need. You somehow need to be able to connect to those things, to get nourishment from them in your daily life. There’s been a stripping away of what keeps you going in the last year. If you’d asked people what they needed a year ago and what they need now, a lot of people would say very different things today. It’s about that self-understanding, it’s a challenge to keep those things alive.’

McKeown jokes that some tracks come together faster than others: ‘I finish a song before I take it to the band and we’ll run through it. Some songs, like ‘In My Place’ just clicked in but ‘How Can I Keep It Alive?’ took longer, I was singing it a lot higher at the beginning, which didn’t really work!’

‘It’s harder and harder for artists to cut through’

She acknowledges that it’s ‘a real music’ time at the moment and that Glasgow has always had a thriving music scene but that the sheer volume of new music can be a challenge: ‘There’s so much more music that people have to choose from right now and more music demanding attention, so it’s harder and harder for artists to cut through.’ McKeown is a big fan of fellow Glaswegian singer, Stephen Solo, and his three albums Pii1, Pii2 and Pii3: ‘He’s a really good songwriter, quite quirky and beautiful, they’re tender-hearted songs, he takes it where he wants to go.’

Music featured in her life from a young age, thanks to an older brother with a huge vinyl collection: ‘He’s three years older, which meant he was old enough to ignore me (laughs) but he made me mixed tapes with The Beatles, The Velvet Underground and Bob Dylan. I like songs with interesting lyrics, somebody who can write a good melody. I’m interested in different approaches to music. I’m really drawn to people who can express themselves in writing. There are people who just like guitars but I’m aiming to get to the heart of something. Really, you’re writing an emotion, a feeling, that singular moment. It’s about sharing something, expressing something you have felt, it can be a turn of phrase or a melody. Some things are more universal than others.’

If they could tour with anyone, she picks Bob Dylan’s The Rolling Thunder Revue in 1975 that also featured the likes of rock, punk singer Patti Smith and folk singer Joan Baez. ‘We’d be on the bus with everyone watching them jam together, there’d be a bit of dressing up!’