Sarah Julia’s music is an exercise in tenderness, bound by sisterhood and defined by a haunting, piercing vulnerability. Their deeply introspective brand of indie folk is forged from a shared childhood: the product of overlapping memories and a communal formative soundtrack that presents itself in the pure vocals that cradle each other in harmony as they delicately address love, heartache and family.
From a young age, they developed a shared love of music – trading album recommendations for the likes of Bon Iver and Ben Howard to expand on the Cat Stevens and Jim Croce their parents raised them on – before they individually began dabbling in making music themselves. But it wasn’t until a significant change in their family occurred that they began intertwining those efforts, seeking a shared catharsis in songwriting.
What emerged was their debut EP How Do We Go Back To Being Normal? – an audible snapshot of a period of their lives enveloped in grief and change. Interwoven with confessional, diaristic lyricism and elegiac harmonies, their mystical take on folk quickly garnered them a cult following.
How Do We Go Back To Being Normal?’s follow-up Only Making It Worse, due out on May 9, builds on these golden foundations. Somehow richer and more devastating than its predecessor, their second EP sees them delve into a slightly poppier soundscape while affirming their entry into a canon of female singer-storytellers spinning gold from the ordinary fabric of everyday life, recalling elements of Phoebe Bridgers, Adrienne Lenker and Joni Mitchell.
Here, they explore the plethora of ways frustration and disappointment show up in their own lives and, in doing so, tap into the hive mind of a generation lost in an increasingly dystopian modern landscape. “It’s this general feeling of just being beaten down and disappointed in the people you love or trust, or once trusted,” Julia explains. “It’s also about wanting change but also knowing you’re not the one to make it happen.”
Produced by Catharine Marks (boygenius, The Big Moon, Wolf Alice), ‘Only Making It Worse’ is comprised of music written over the past three years. While touring their first EP, they began trialling its follow-up on the oad, sculpting the songs further with each live performance.
By allowing the songs to simmer over the years, they also found that the initial anger that had been the foundation of some of them had dissipated into a more melodic sadness. “You really want to make sure that you stand behind the song even after all that time,” Sarah explains of their tendency to take their time. “You don’t want it to feel too impulsive. Especially for these songs and for what stage we’re at in our lives right now, it just feels holding onto them all this time has been the truest thing to who we are.”
As a whole, their second EP flexes their unique ability to transform frustration and pain into a collection of songs that, inadvertently, find wonder within despair. By doing so, they hope they’ll be able to provide a sense of comfort to listeners also caught in the web of disappointment.
