Pillow Queens: “Tap into your emotions, name your sorrow, and drown it”
Pillow Queens’ road to reconciliation has only just started. Historically, Rachel Lyons tells Far Out, they might have been seen as a political band, but in today’s landscape, this translates to possessing social awareness. Amid Ireland’s enduring societal challenges, Pillow Queens view progression and emotional navigation as something that’s ever-growing, a dangling beacon of hope for a better world — but only if we are willing to fight for it.
The band, which consists of lead vocalists Pamela Connolly and Sarah Corcoran, alongside Cathy McGuinness and Lyons, enjoy letting their audience in. Sometimes allowing reactions to even ignite and influence their own musical direction, Pillow Queens are well-versed in the act of tried-and-tested regimes, enjoying the back-and-forth of teasing snippets of songs to their audience and re-adjusting them based on the reactions.
Although this says a lot about their work ethic and the value they place on their fans, Name Your Sorrow was a swift turn in the opposite direction as they momentarily closed the door to the outside world and focussed in ways they never had before. As a result, the album is a concise demonstration of everything Pillow Queens is and has to offer, pulling on various aspects of their popular artistry and taking it all to the next level. Naturally, therefore, intimacy played a big part in its creation.
“This album is far more vulnerable and open than our previous two,” says Lyons, describing the first project as a “patchwork quilt of songs”, while the second record, due to being pieced together during the latter part of during lockdown, reflected the fact that they each “didn’t have much time to breathe”. Name Your Sorrow, by comparison, was a more considered effort which saw them “experimenting, swapping instruments, and really listening to each other”.
And it pays off – Name Your Sorrow is undoubtedly their most accomplished work yet, complete with all of the quintessential elements of authenticity that made them great in the first place. The environment was likely an influencing factor during the recording process, as the band took to the female-owned Analogue Catalogue to see the project to fruition. The studio was also once owned by New Order, and they got access to the various instruments during their own creative processes, a unique spark of inspiration for a comparatively new outfit.
“That was pretty special,” says Corcoran, who explained that the Analogue Catalogue choice came as a result of wanting to “lock ourselves away in a residential studio so we could really immerse ourselves in the recording process”. Maybe this was the key to their graduation from an ‘if you know, you know’ band to one with international scalability.
This time, Pillow Queens enlisted Collin Pastore to produce the album, who had previously worked on projects with Boygenius, Lucy Dacus, and Illuminati Hotties. Pastore’s involvement, according to Lyons, secured “a little je ne sais quoi that we had never expected or knew we wanted”. Lyons explains that this ensured the band “kept the rock element” as well as including “acoustic guitar, grand piano, and synth”. In the past, the band always knew exactly how a song should sound before they had even recorded it.
With Pastore’s input, they were exposed to certain things and a new way of working that became a gateway for significant change. “With Collin, we’d record something, listen back and think, ‘that’s not how I thought it would sound’, but it’s better”, admits Lyons. The strict routine they had subjected themselves to ended up being the ideal primer for Pastore’s arrival, who allowed for more creative space in the studio Before Pastore’s arrival, enabling their experimental skillset to truly shine.
Despite never being in the crosshairs of the group’s focus, it ultimately became quite a significant change, Lyons explains. Pillow Queens usually avoided adding new instruments to their music, with the challenge of taking the recordings to the stage, growing exponentially with every new sound. This time, however, expanding their horizons felt like a necessary “evolution” that shaped Name Your Sorrow into something fuller and grander.
It wasn’t the only influence on the record. The group also caught out vital influences to help melt the bandmate’s preferences into one holistic sound. According to Lyons, this helped them to “tune into each other’s frequencies” and “reference the sounds we wanted to emulate production-wise”. In order to do this effectively, like so many groups of friends across the world, they created a playlist comprising “anything we liked at that moment in time”.
It would probably be easy to listen to the album and then extract all of the various influences that made it onto that “wild” playlist, but Corcoran tells us that they specifically included legendary acts like Fleetwood Mac, St. Vincent, Kings of Leon, Alvvays, MJ Lenderman, Pinegrove, Interpol, Abba, Aldous Harding, Pearl Jam, and many others. The truth is, to liken Pillow Queens to any of those musicians is far too reductive. Their music may borrow certain sensibilities, but those influences ultimately polish the sparkling excellence of their own sound.
Within Pillow Queens’ music, particularly throughout Name Your Sorrow, there are clear themes of self-worth and vulnerability reflected in the instrumentation and lyrics. There’s also a fundamental message of messiness throughout, but in a way that’s different to the band’s contemporaries, like Phoebe Bridgers or even Lana Del Rey. While those artists have established a well-earned cosmos in their own right, Pillow Queens approach realism by placing more importance on the unknown and the complexities of contradicting emotions.
While there may seem like clear themes that run throughout, Corcoran is happy for anyone to interpret the album however they please. The ideas may have begun as specific seeds found within each of the band members’ own personal experiences, but what the listener takes away from the album is entirely up to them. That said, the obvious cultural context that may seep through the cracks is difficult to ignore, but Corcoran clarifies that this is in no way intentional.
“Ireland’s social changes over the last few years paint a very progressive picture of Ireland, which is great on one hand because it’s nice to have that representation of our country on an international level,” says Corcoran. “There is, however, so much more ground for us to cover before Ireland becomes a comfortable place to live.”
Continuing, the singer says that “the housing crisis that’s seemingly not being prioritised by our Government, scarce mental health resources, waiting lists, and a lack of trust in our leaders” are each contributing to “a lot of unrest” for the country’s inhabitants. “Those frustrations probably come across in everything we create, but it’s not a conscious decision to write with it in mind,” Corcoran explains.
Pillow Queens may not be a political band in the traditional sense, but their endearingly humanistic characteristics come through in everything they do. Name Your Sorrow feels like an incredibly personal glimpse into the next chapter of the group, filled with intellectual musings and notions of hope delivered in a way that really spotlights their creative brilliance. Reconciliation is an open road, and they recognise the power of learning from past traumas and mistakes on the journey to healing.
As Lyons puts it: “Tap into your emotions, name your sorrow, and drown it.”
