After several delays due to multiple lockdowns, Irish songstress Imelda May has finally released her sixth studio album, 11 Past the Hour. We chatted with Imelda to discuss the album and her experience releasing music during the pandemic.

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Just to introduce myself, my name is Fraser, I run The House That Soul Built. We actually covered your concert a couple of years ago at the Palladium for Friday Night is Music Night.

Imelda May: Oh cool, yes! That was a good night, I enjoyed that, that was a lot of work for one night and I was really glad that it went so well. It was a lot of planning, a lot of learning and rehearsing and arrangements. I enjoyed myself so much on the night, it was over in the blink of an eye and I wanted to do it all over again!

My first question is just a general one, how have you fared in lockdown? How has 2020 been for you?

Imelda May: Fine, I mean I’m healthy, I have food on the table and a roof over my head, which a lot of people don’t, so that’s all that matters for now. Yes, I’m grand. And within the music industry there’s a lot of people who don’t have that, because the whole entertainment industry’s on its knees, so I’m very, very lucky. I’m grateful to be able to put this album out.

Were you writing this during lockdown? When did you start working on this album?

Imelda May: I mostly wrote it before lockdown but I wrote some after and I was mixing it right in the middle of lockdown, which took way longer than it would have done had I just been in the studio. I love mixing – it’s like being in a sweet shop, so I felt robbed that I didn’t get the chance to do that but I was glad it came out well in the end. But weirdly, a lot of the songs that I wrote before lockdown fit so well, they’ve taken on a whole new meaning and I’m not that surprised, because I do think a lot of creators or artists can be quite perceptive and pick up on things, not that I picked up on a worldwide pandemic but I think we all had a weird feeling that something might happen. I think everybody had a feeling that we were so fast and moving so quickly, I think something had to give.

Did lockdown impact on your creative process as you mixed the album?

Imelda May: Whatever way it happened, I’m really glad that this album is coming out now. It felt to me like it had more value. I’m needing music more than ever, I’m needing literature, I’m needing movies and stimulation more than ever, and so instead of continuing to push the album back I wanted to get it out.

Every song on the album is about love in some form or another, and not just romantic love. ‘Don’t Let Me Stand on My Own’ is about mental health and supporting each other up through times that we just need to be held up; ‘Made to Love’ is about fighting for love and accepting each other and it’s about people who really give their lives – literally gave their lives – for love, and I name-check Lennon and Jesus and Martin Luther King and Marielle Franco. There’s lust for love too; there’s plenty of dirty, sexy rock and roll on there. And there’s ‘Breathe’ which is all about the universe and the earth, and loving and taking care of the earth and what will she feel like with how we’ve been treating her. I’m glad that I didn’t write a miserable album, I don’t think that this is the time for it.

That’s why I asked, because there is something oddly prophetic and timely about the album, given that you wrote most of it before lockdown.

Imelda May: Isn’t it strange?

I’m interested in the album from a sonic perspective, because it is quite different and it’s got this brooding, noir aesthetic. How did you land on that specific texture?

Imelda May: I started to see the number ’11:11′ everywhere for a while and I was curious as to what that was, and the more I looked into it the more I was fascinated by it. Apparently it’s a call to awakening and being more aware and tuning in to the whole universe if you can, opening yourself up to possibilities, and that fascinated me. I wrote that song ’11 Past the Hour’, I wrote it with Pedro Vito and Sebastian Sternberg. Pedro’s a really good pal of mine and we think along the same lines, and he had this beautiful melody going for the middle, and we just worked on it. So I’m predominantly the lyricist and I just scribble away, and I wanted it to be almost like Mother Nature, Mother Earth calling, or God, it’s that love that we all need, that child-like-, we all pretend to be grown-ups, yes we’re adults but we all ultimately feel like children living in an adult’s body a lot of the time, and we all have that need I think, that child-like need, that you just want someone to wrap their arms around you and tell you everything’s going to be alright, whether that’s your mother or your father or your lover or your god, that’s what I wanted from that song: ‘Dance with me darling, forget this world, I’ll hold you in my arms as we twirl around.’ But sonically, I’m there all the way, I accept my darkness.

I’m curious: where are you most comfortable as a vocalist? Is it when you’re belting and getting raspy or is it when you’re being sultry and finessing a song?

Imelda May: I like to do both! I’ve never studied music in a formal way but I have studied it in every other way. When I was a kid, I remember sitting listening to records. I’d listen to Ella Fitzgerald and I loved how she’d swoop and make a tiny, little, fast vibrato at the end and I’d copy that, and then I’d listen to Janis Joplin and then I’d hear Aretha Franklin and I’d just go through all these great, great women and I’d just try and copy what they were doing and to learn how to move my voice, my throat in those ways. I love all of it when I sing and I’m lucky that when I go in to record, I know what I’m doing. I do all my own backing vocals and I’ll say to whoever is in the studio with me, ‘Just let it run, I don’t know what I’m doing yet but I will,’ and I’ll just run through all different ideas and feelings and I’ll just follow the song and then I’ll listen back and feel what’s working.

You mentioned needing music more than ever. What have you been engaging with recently? 

Imelda May: I’ve been delving into Irish music more than ever. I’m getting involved in a movement called ‘Seachtain na Gaeilge’ that I’m an ambassador for and what I’ve discovered is that, because the Irish language was taken from us, it means all those past songs are gone, so you lose so much history.

I once toured around with these soul legends that had played in James Brown’s band and I was on the road listening to all their stories – we talked about blues and jazz and soul and Irish music, and how weirdly linked they are in that it has to be from your heart and your soul. You don’t have to be the best singer in the world, but if you go to that place where you close your eyes, put your head back and start to sing… I remember this old man in this pub once, in Ireland, and he hadn’t got a tooth in his head and hardly a note in his head either, and he just threw his head back and started singing and the whole place just turned around. He sang with so much heart and soul that you couldn’t do anything except really feel what he was feeling, and I think that’s the basis of any good music, to be honest.