Interview: Julia Marcell

Although she currently lives in Berlin and sings almost exclusively in English, we still consider her a representative of a thriving generation of young Polish singer-songwriters.

In October, Julia Marcell will release her third LP and just a week ago she showed us a new video. Here’s what she told us about “Manners” and about the new album, “Sentiments”.

“It’s a song about the tension between what we feel and what’s expected of us, what we should do, and what we wanna do. I find this tension to be constantly fascinating, and a fuel for many of my creative efforts, because it’s the primal force of music that allows me to express myself without the difficulty to understand or name my own feelings.”

[youtube id=”RChaKK7e0xA”]

“This became an important topic on my new album “Sentiments”. The record has a lot of weird characters, ones you’d normally see in a graphic novel, and each song is like a letter to one of them. All very romantic and abstract sometimes, but also very straightforward and personal. I took my own stories and treated them with a lot of creative freedom, but not to hide behind metaphors, rather use them to tell more.”

“There’s a lot of darkness in the music, more than I had before. Even “Manners”, which is the more upbeat, energetic song, is built around this construct, where guitar leaps from one drum hit to the other, leaving open spaces that are almost too long, and then it suddenly changes rhythmical figures. I find that a bit unsettling, suggesting a struggle, something about to burst.”

“But on the surface it’s a fun song, with a lot of humor in the lyrics and that humor is something I wanted to show in the video as well. The crew and I had the greatest time shooting the video in a beautiful, big, old school in Klodzko in Poland, with a cast of many talented young people, and I think the good energy translated to picture.”

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You will find more videos from Julia Marcell on her YouTube channel. You can also visit her official website and follow her on Facebook and Soundcloud.

fot. Krzysztof Wyżyński

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