Skyelyn

Eye of Skye looks beneath the visible world and into something more mysterious. How did that idea shape the album as you were making it?

I really wanted to capture something for what it is in that moment, like a time capsule. I also wanted it to transcend time and space, like a ghost. I’ve had personal experiences where I felt I was in the presence of something otherworldly, and that feeling found its way into a lot of my songs. I would sometimes imagine singing from the perspective of something folkloric or a symbolic animal. It’s so mysterious to me that animals' inner worlds are almost completely inaccessible to us. We can observe them, though we’d never truly know how another species experiences being alive. We wonder about extraterrestrial life, and in many ways, we’re currently surrounded by completely different forms of consciousness here on Earth. I’ve always been fascinated by unexplained phenomena and strange folklore that has been passed down throughout history. This sense of mystery, and the idea that there may be more to the world than what we see helped shape the Eye of Skye.

Eyes, mirrors and bodies of water keep appearing across the record. How did these images find their way into the songs?

I can only describe it as an artistic obsession. To me, there is something so poetic about the dualities of water. You can see your own reflection while a world is swimming below, you can dive deeper or stay floating at the surface, between worlds. It can kill you, but you need it to stay alive. It can change rapidly from calm to wild. Mirrors and eyes have the same portal-esque quality to me, they reveal something but never everything. It’s almost as if a ghost were an object, that’s what these examples embody to me. I’m fascinated by the portal between the visible and invisible, so it inevitably made its way into these songs. My first full lyrical exploration of this concept was “Surface” which I released with my band Solgyres. I think Eye of Skye takes this fascination much further.

You describe harmonising with yourself as inhabiting two characters. What did that give you creatively that a single voice couldn’t?

It lets me explore different dualities such as the spirit and the living, the feminine and the masculine, the older versus younger version of yourself and more. Some songs are the perspectives of two people, with different views of the same situation, with each harmony sung in different moods. When I sing with one voice I feel it is more of a natural emphasis on what I’m saying lyrically. With harmony, the multiple voices become more part of a story, as characters acting it out with how they sing it. I’m in love with the idea that two voices can sing the same words while telling two different sides of a story.

The songs often avoid traditional structures and expected resolutions. How did you approach creating that feeling of uncertainty?

A lot of these songs came from a period of isolation, but I think I really needed it. At one point, I remember realizing I hadn’t really been around anyone in a while, though strangely I felt more like myself. I was so used to hearing what I should like or what music should sound like that I wasn’t even sure what I genuinely liked anymore. Having this space was like a reset, and I started trusting my own instincts more. I stopped caring as much about everything being polished or technically perfect. I had enough space from the rest of the world to appreciate silence and imperfections, too. I wasn’t consciously trying to create uncertainty in the album, it sort of happened naturally as I started listening more to my instincts, without telling the songs what to do all the time. I think art becomes most interesting when it’s given the chance to stray from perfection.

Many of the songs began with poems written after strange dreams. Can you take us into the process of turning one of those moments into a finished song?

I remember waking from a dream where I was drowning, but as soon as I breathed in, I realised I could actually breathe underwater. Around that same time, I was experiencing a strange feeling of longing and suspense. One night while driving home, a melody came to me out of nowhere combining the dream with my reality at the time. That’s often how songs happen for me. I’ll be having a feeling or a recurring dream, and I could easily sing “I’m falling in love” but I think it’s more fun to describe something indirectly. I think in a way that could get closer to the truth, and makes it all the more dramatic. This reference is from the song “Do I Drown (In Your Suspense)”. Writing songs has been my greatest joy, even if some of the songs don’t seem particularly joyous. I would say it is my most favorite thing in the world to do.

The album asks the listener to turn the lights down, be alone and look into their own reflection. What kind of space were you hoping the record would create for the listener?

I don’t think looking into your reflection should be entirely literal. To me, it’s more about being somewhere that you can’t distract yourself from how you actually feel. I hope the album gives people this sort of space to step outside of themselves for a moment to let their imagination float through the songs. I’m particularly drawn to the space between the physical and metaphysical, and this idea of seeing the unseen. I don’t think the album needs to mean one particular thing to everyone. I’d rather they just feel it.