Maria Kelly spoke to David Hennessy about her new album that deals with themes such as the inaccessibility of the health service and the housing crisis.
Westport songstress Maria Kelly returns to the UK this month having launched her second album, Waiting Room.
Following her 2021 debut album, The Sum of the In-between, Waiting Room was inspired by Maria finding herself stuck in sterile clinics hoping for answers to inscrutable chronic pain.
She describes the album as an exploration of the roadblocks, both internally and externally, that keep us feeling powerless and taking away our agency.
The album also sees Maria ruminating on the housing crisis, societal expectations and faded friendships.
What made you want to name the album Waiting Room?
“A couple of different things.
“It’s a very literal title in a lot of senses because I just had a few years of chronic pain stuff happening to me, and I couldn’t figure out what was going on so I just ended up spending a lot of time in waiting rooms.
“I also had someone close to me have a similar thing and spent a lot of time with them in waiting rooms.
“I just spent too many days in that environment so it got me thinking about different imagery and then that sort of grew into a broader theme for me of feeling stuck, feeling in a cycle, being sent from person to person looking for answers.
“I started exploring that world of how you feel in a waiting room and how it relates to other things in your life.
“It ended up just becoming about all the ways I was feeling stuck at the time and trying to break through those barriers.”
Are you okay now with the pain? Did you get some help with it?
“Yeah. I’m much better.
“I think, in hindsight, a lot of what was making it worse was I just was in a lot of stressful environments so it’s just hard to sort of get a handle on those things when you’re in a difficult place.
“I’m still sort of getting to the bottom of some stuff but I found a lot more space in my life to look after it and have met some professionals I really click with, which I think is half the battle.
“And my head space is way better than it was so overall feeling very, very much like a different person to who started writing this record.”
It must have been frustrating to be looking for answers and, by the sounds of it, being sent from pillar to post..
“It was a difficult process.
“I know a lot of people in Ireland who have gone through similar cycles.
“I just found I was sent around to a lot of different people and not given a lot of information.
“I was just doing a lot of research myself and that can be extremely taxing trying to figure out what you should be doing, trying to get answers to things but not necessarily getting them.
“It was definitely difficult to navigate.
“I won’t dwell on it too much because I feel like I’ve sort of found an even keel now.”
I remember you telling me during our last interview how much it meant that your music helped someone who was actually sick.
I bet, with the themes of this record, it would mean a great deal if this album had that impact, spoke to someone who was going through something similar..
“I think any time someone reaches out and connects with anything I’ve written is just really cool and really comforting.
“People listening to this album, I would hope it accompanies them through those sort of lonely times when you’re trying to solve a problem that you can’t solve.
“There’s moments on it that are very much about trying to find your voice and your agency when that’s been taken away from you or when these external services or environments that you’re in are not working for you and that can really erode your sense of self.
“I hope people who listen to it find some comfort and know that they’re definitely not alone with such feelings.
“The problems are far bigger than us as individuals.”
Another theme on the record is the housing crisis which you, and many others, have been affected by..
“It’s very central to so many issues that I think people my age are facing.
“It made its way into this album for me just because of places I was living at the time.
“I was just thinking a lot of how that was affecting the other things in my life I was trying to deal with and how, when something so fundamental is unstable, it’s just really hard to catch your breath and feel like you’re not in survival mode a lot of the time.
“Whether you’re living in a rental that you’re not sure how long you’re going to have, or you only have it for a year, or something’s wrong with it, or there needs to be things fixed, you’re not really being listened to or looked after in that environment.
“It can just be really detrimental to your mental health and everything else that that affects.”
The last time The Irish World spoke to Maria she was in Wexford, she is now based in Bray. She has also spent time in Berlin.
“I’ve moved a lot.
“I recently was asked to write an article for The Journal and it was just about my experience in the housing situation in Ireland.
“I counted up how many times in the last 10 years I had moved.
“I actually had in the article 13 times but my dad reminded me of another one that I had forgotten about, so it was 14 times.
“I moved 14 times in the last 10 years which is bizarre when you count them up.”
And how did you find the reaction to that Journal piece?
“I got some really lovely messages from people expressing their own experiences and just kind of thanking me for being open about it which was really lovely to receive.
“I did make the mistake of reading the comments on the actual article and they were, unfortunately not as kind but they were interesting to read.
“They didn’t necessarily hurt me, just people had a lot of opinions about my career and my choices and why I might have been in that situation of having to move so many times.
“I found that really interesting because I think it just shows how angry people are but they’re maybe not putting it in the right places.
“It just shows this sort of misunderstanding around people in those situations.
“That was strange to read because, as I said in the article, the problem is much bigger than me and my experience.
“It’s a lot more complicated than that.
“I don’t know the answers but I think the more we sort of keep making noise about it, the better.”
Another theme of the record is the expectations we put on ourselves…
“I would be a victim to my own high expectations a lot of the time.
“I think this record I was writing so much about feeling stuck and waiting for things to get better and resolve but at the same time I was thinking, ‘Wow, I’m really watching so much time pass me by while I’m trying to figure out this thing’, ‘This is not where I thought I would be’, or ‘I should not be living in this place’.
“I ‘should’ be..
“Whatever ‘should’ you’re putting on yourself…
“I think it was also working through some of the shame around those things happening.”
Your song Drive features on the trailer for the film Ezra which stars Bobby Cannavale, Rose Byrne, Whoopi Goldberg and even Robert De Niro, what was that like?
“That was really cool because Drive was the first single that we put out from the album.
“I hadn’t done anything in quite a while and it was really nice to get that selected so quickly after it was out, it was just really exciting.
“It was just a nice, kind of serendipitous thing that my song fit what they were looking for.
“The movie is a dad and his son going on a road trip and the song was called Drive so it was very nice to be a part of it.”
It’s four years on from your debut record. Would you have liked to have had album number two out a bit sooner, perhaps? Or did it have to take the time it had to take?
“I think it took as long as it was meant to take.
“I think I had a lot to process and write about in this record and that’s what it’s always been like for me.
“It just comes together at the point it’s meant to.
“It was quite cyclical like I was making progress and then had to stop for a myriad of reasons or I ran into issues, or just was figuring out what sound to go for, or trying different things or rewriting things.
“So it was not as straightforward as my first album but the process, I think, in hindsight was challenging but that made me grow and challenge myself and step outside my comfort zone.”
Is there a different feeling around this one than your than your first album?
“I would say it feels very different.
“Even sonically, it feels very different.
“It’s a much bigger sound for me.
“I think I really stepped out of my comfort zone on certain tracks and stepped away from the straight up folk singer-songwriter genre.
“Some of it goes a bit bigger and it just delves into some bigger sonic worlds.
“I’m really dealing with some bigger themes and harder themes and bigger vulnerabilities and insecurities and maybe being even more honest than my first so definitely drilled a little deeper.”
You’re coming to London in April. Now we know your album is called Waiting Room, what’s the name of the venue you’re playing here again?
“The venue is called The Waiting Room,” Maria laughs.
Is that a happy coincidence or what?
“No, I knew of that venue and a friend of mine runs a promotion company over there so he has done shows specifically in that venue as well.
“It sort of lined up nicely.
“But I was like, ‘I have to do it there if I’m gonna do a place in London’.”
You have played a bit in London, didn’t you play with KT Tunstall one time?
“Yeah, wow, that was my early days of releasing stuff and I I did a show in London.
“Golden Slippers is the name of the event and they do these secret, exclusive shows in these interesting venues and I got added to this bill with KT Tunstall.
“It was bucket list stuff for me at the time because I grew up listening to a lot of her music.
“That was really, really cool.”
What are your memories of that?
Did you get to hang out or chat much with KT?
“I got to chat with her a bit.
“It was really cool.
“Me and my brother went together and we were chatting to her a bit and then she also brought Mel C from the Spice Girls.
“She was there at least and we got a photo with her as well.
“We were sending them to our parents being like, ‘Oh my God’.
“It was really, really cool.”
Does that still take some topping or what have been your pinch me moments?
“I think that was definitely one of those moments.
“And I got to play a show (Imagining Ireland) in 2018 at the Barbican Centre in London and I was on a line-up with Paul Noonan from Bell X1 and Lisa Hannigan and Saint Sister and Loah and all these amazing artists from Ireland.
“I really felt like this small fish at that stage and it was really cool to be added to such a thing.
“Just a real pinch me moment was getting to meet Lisa Hannigan.
“She was just so kind and so kind about my music.
“I was like, ‘This is surreal’, because I just love her music so much.
“That was definitely like, ‘Wow, this is an incredible moment’.
“Especially that venue.
“It’s just the most beautiful, huge venue in London so it felt particularly special.”
Did you always know it was going to be music for you? Or when did you know you wanted to pursue it?
“Yeah, I actually just always knew.
“It was just always the thing that was pulling me and my parents were very supportive.
“I just sort of went from one thing to the next thing that felt exciting and there was nothing else I wanted to do at the time when I left school, so I’m glad that I sort of took the leap and studied it.”
The Sum of the In-between has amassed more than six million streams worldwide with the track Someone Else soundtracking the trailer for Sally Rooney TV adaptation, Conversations With Friends.
“I think that project really opened me up to way more people and specifically more the type of people who I think really connect with what I do.
“It also just gave me more of an identity for myself as an artist.
“It was a very defining project for me.”
Are you already looking ahead to album number three?
“Yeah, I think I’m excited to make the next thing and I have some shows coming up in April.
“I’m just doing Dublin, Belfast, London and Brighton for the first time. I’ve never played in Brighton before.
“And then I’ll probably do a few things throughout the summer but then I might go back into hibernation and make the next thing and then see what happens.
“I’d love to maybe make something that was celebratory now that I feel in a different place.
“I think it’s good to lean into that energy sometimes and have some more upbeat stuff going on maybe, but we’ll see. We’ll watch this space, I guess.”
Waiting Room is out now.
Maria Kelly plays Unitarian Church, Dublin on 11 April, The Sunflower Pub in Belfast on 18 April, The Waiting Room in London on 25 April, The Folklore Rooms in Brighton on 30 April and Small Sessions at the Lake, Berlin on 13 May.
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