ELISE LUNT ruminates on Saoirse Moncrieff at Next Door Records Two.

Down the north end of Stoke Newington Road, tucked away downstairs at Next Door Records Two, Saoirse Moncrieff performed before an attentive audience—enraptured both by her sincerity and sensitivity, even before she took her seat onstage. This was not my first time at a gig of hers. I had seen her, here in this very room, in August. But that which was altered exceeded the mere melting of thick languid days into February grey; something, and this may read ironic, felt warmer still.

The Dublin native singer-songwriter and disciplinary artist started out posting on YouTube in her late teens. A visual sketchbook collecting moments from her life in a deeply thoughtful and honest manner; discussing her struggles with mental health, experience with love and loss, spirituality and artistic crisis. She started writing music during the pandemic, recording her songs as voice memos on her sister’s phone and uploading them onto SoundCloud. The first of these songs, ‘Warm rum breath’ included in her set and on her debut collection of songs, aptly titled ‘Songs from my bedroom’, released late last year.

The atmosphere is immediately intimate—not just because of the venue’s size, but scattered throughout the crowd are those closest to her. Her sister Ellie is checking tickets at the door and, later, her sister Keelin will spontaneously accompany her on stage with a tambourine (a task she was apparently handed very last minute). There is a palpable magnetism between her world and ours; the point at which the two collide is not set, but fused, with no fixed boundary. Sitting surrounded by her friends and family, to whom some of the songs are dedicated to or inspired by, there is an unusual feeling of closeness and intimacy with those immediately around us. Perhaps this all stems from something all too parasocial.

It feels banal to repeatedly use the word ‘intimate’ in describing the performance and experience (and as I write this, I am wracking my brain for a synonym that will suffice). The word is too often thrown at anything remotely resembling the folk or singer-songwriter tradition. But it is intimate; her performance and the songs, living and breathing as they are performed by Saoirse and her guitar (and Keelin on tambourine, lest we forget). Shoes removed and set aside, a beer resting in one, from the moment she beckons us to sit down on that crowded basement’s floor, she had invited us, at least momentarily—if only momentarily—to share in the wonder of her world. Sitting shoulder to shoulder with the subjects of her songs, the rest of us gaze up almost silently. It is spiritual. Yet, equally, it is light-hearted in its sincerity. Saoirse Moncrieff embodies ever so slight chaotic earnestness; there is beauty to the ‘mistakes’ she makes, each of which she exclaims and smiles at.

In the tradition of perhaps a ‘Five Leaves Left’ era Nick Drake or a slightly stripped-back Mojave 3, her songs invite you to sit at the end of another’s bed, bathed in orange light. You pull your knees up below your chin, head slightly cocked to look at them, and listen to the rhythm and cadence of their voice, as though it is the only thing that has ever been worth worshiping. There is a sweetness to her songs, such as in ‘Ellie’s dress’, accompanied by the precocious, raw clarity in daylight, and in growing up.

In her soft Dublin lilt, she enquires as to the time and plays her last few songs. She then emerges back into the crowd, where she’d been standing and dancing throughout the support artist’s set, to mingle with those who linger a little longer in the warmth of it all.