Since releasing her first EP Trains back in 2012, the Irish singer/songwriter has garnered plenty of attention for her beautiful, enigmatic vocals. The BBC, iTunes and Spotify all recently included her on their lists of artists to watch out for in 2015, and her debut album Before We Forgot How to Dream is scheduled to drop in May.
“It was never a plan,” says Monds-Watson. “I wasn’t a young person thinking I was going to be Beyonce. I did it as a thing that I enjoyed doing. It was a way for me to sing songs and write things that I wouldn’t say normally… Stuff I made in my bedroom.”
We’re speaking to Monds-Watson on the phone from New York City, where she’s in the middle of her first US tour. Although she’s no stranger to live shows, she admits her schedule has gotten a lot more hectic since signing a record deal with Rough Trade Records.
“Just before Christmas last year, it got really quite intense and busy, and everything has gone quite fast.” she says. “I feel like I shouldfeel more pressure than I actually do. But I’m a pretty relaxed person in general, and I don’t take things too seriously… I love being busy, and there’s so much opportunity, which is great.”
While it’s shaping up to be a colossal year for the young singer, the reality is that music has always been a big part of her life. “Growing up my parents played tons of Pink Floyd and Joni Mitchell and Led Zeppelin and Bob Dylan,” she says. “Some nights one of my parents would look after me and my siblings, and put on really aggressive Beethoven or Mozart, and we’d all run around the living room. So I’ve been subjected to tons of music growing up. A lot of the people that my parents made me listen to have been massive inspirations for me, and are artists and bands that I still listen to now.”
From these early beginnings, Monds-Watson soon began writing songs of her own. “I don’t stick to any formula,” she says. “Sometimes I write the guitar first and then I write the lyrics, and sometimes I do it the opposite way. Usually I carry notebooks and write loads of stuff down. I write a lot about everyday experiences, or experiences that meant something to me… A lot of my music is about growing up, and things that happened between me and my mates, or me and my family.”
Growing up is certainly a major theme of her upcoming album. A collection of songs written over the course of her entire adolescence, it’s a very personal project that she calls “a good representation of [her] life,” and one that covers “a lot of things that people [her] age go through.”
At the same time, Monds-Watson readily admits that hers is not what you’d call a typical teenage experience. “When I think about it in a calm moment, it’s quite amazing and unexpected and incredible,” she says with a chuckle. “Everyone who’s my age usually spends all their time with their mates. I guess that’s not my life at the moment, and hasn’t been for quite a while.”
Being away from home can occasionally get difficult for Monds-Watson. “I miss my friends,” she says. “Every opportunity I get to be home, I spend all my time with them. And I obviously miss my family. I think in general, because I’m doing such a different thing to most people my age, I miss out on like classic Friday and Saturday night parties.”
Honestly, it doesn’t seem like things are going to get less busy for Monds-Watson any time soon. “Half the time I don’t really know what I’m doing the next week,” she says. “I’m definitely doing one day at a time at the moment… I don’t really have like a specific month off or anything. Not for quite a while, especially in the lead up to my first ever record. There’s going to be a lot of touring.”
Still, it seems like the trade-off is well worth it. “I’m having a really good time,” she assures us. “You start doing it for the love of it, and then you fall into this system where you’re doing it for your income, and as a career. But I don’t think there’s a career I could do if I didn’t love it, because my songs are all about honesty and real life. If I couldn’t convey any emotion then there’d be no point in what I’m doing at all.”
BY TOM CLIFT
