On the Rise
Sarah Kinsley

She began playing piano aged four and affectionately dubbs herself an “orchestra kid” - referring to her extensive training as a violinist in a classical ensemble. Her classical skills and sensibilities, coupled with her fascination with the Top 200 chart and pop songs on the radio, have now manifested into the 24 year old’s own brand of leftfield pop, which has led her to support the likes of Mitski, Weyes Blood and Sylvan Esso on their US tours.

After releasing four EPs in quick succession - The Fall (2020), The King (2021), Cypress (2022) and Ascensions (2023) - Kinsley is now preparing to share her debut full length record, Escaper. The album does not carry any negative connotations linked to its title. Whilst the content of many of her songs is inspired by grief, heartbreak and loss, Kinsley is not trapped by these emotions any longer. The vibrant sounds on Escaper offer listeners relief from these restrictive feelings, as the songwriter transforms them into something extraordinary with her heartfelt, grand pop melodies.

“I am so excited and so nervous about it,” Kinsley shares about the release. “I really hope they listen to it in full. I want to know what people think of the story that I’m trying to tell about forgiving the need to escape and go beyond ourselves sometimes, in order to come back to who we are. I hope the album can be a really nice source of escape and a place to go to.” Kinsley’s awareness of the ability of music to affect and inspire others has been nurtured from a young age.

“I was really drawn to how music could move you, or move other people, especially if you didn’t speak the same language and instrumental music was very necessary for my understanding of that,” Kinsley offers, when asked about her earliest memories of music. She loved the grandeur of playing in an orchestral ensemble, but her affection for the “nonsense” and “insanity” of mainstream pop music intensified alongside this, as did her desire to write her own music, which she began creating between the ages of 10 and 13 years old.

“I wrote a really, really melodramatic song about being invisible - the title was something like 'Invisible Me' or 'I Am Invisible' - it could not have been less subtle,” she laughs. “I remember the first time I finished writing the song, it was just this really indescribable magic. All of my thoughts were there, coherent, with a melody and they were measured in this one song. For some reason, the simplicity of that understanding and figuring out that I could do that again in another song, was such an incredible feeling. I feel like I still chase that now to some extent.”

This natural epiphany sparked an aspiration in Kinsley that has permeated all of her work to date. The multi-instrumentalist uses music as a vessel for escapism and understanding. Escaper, is a dramatic display of intense emotions punctuated by her striking string sounds, infectious melodies, uplifting keys and Kinsley’s dynamic vocals, which are reminiscent of Kate Bush at points. Although she self-produced the majority of her EPs, on her debut album, Kinsley worked alongside producer John Congleton (Angel Olsen, St Vincent) to bring her leftfield pop visions to life.

“Working with John was me trying to challenge myself and figure out ‘what does this song actually need?’ and then the other half of the time, it was just me experimenting and playing like a kid,” Kinsley shares. “ [I was] being really childish with finding new sounds and being open to the newness of things. I loved it so much.” This curious spirit led Kinsley to experiment with two unusual instruments on the record: glass bowls and the ondes martenot.

“The glass bowls were incredible. They spin on a motor and you have to get your fingers just damp enough so that there’s friction with the glass. Depending on the width of the bowl, it produces this really wonderful resonant sound.” Kinsley has shared footage of herself using the instrument on her Instagram, as well as the elegantly named ondes Martenot. To the untrained eye, the instrument looks like a keyboard or a synth, but Kinsley explains its idiosyncrasies further: “It has this metal ring attached to a wire that goes through the instrument, so that you can bliss through the notes as opposed to playing them as you would on the keys. There’s this wonderful texture that almost sounds like a voice when you play it, because you can slide between the notes. It provided so much warmth and sweetness because of the glide.”

There are many layers to Escaper that give the record the warm and varied textures that Kinsley refers to. Despite not playing with an orchestra since she was in high school - she didn’t continue playing in college when she began studying audio engineering and production - Kinsley picked up her violin again as part of an ensemble whilst she was recording the record, which she describes as an “awesome” experience. For Kinsley, who usually writes, records and produces all of her music from her apartment, the process of creating Escaper marked the first time she was away from her physical comfort zone, making a “giant body” of work in a new environment with a new collaborator

“I was very used to this sort of insular life of being completely on my own in a room, locked in and just creating,” Kinsley continues. The songwriter had worked with another producer before, Jake Aron, on The King EP, but she explains that the bulk of her writing, recording and producing work was always a solo effort. Kinsley would create her music in her “dingy little apartment closet” in New York, where she would throw blankets over the doors and walls to dull the sounds of sirens and cars going by. Going into a studio with Congleton to collaborate on an entire body of work was a challenge that Kinsley enjoyed and Congleton’s experienced ears helped her to refine the classical elements and allowed the emotional escapism of her pop melodies to flourish.

Whilst on the subject of production, we circle back to an unusual but pivotal moment in Kinsley’s career. Three years ago, she shared a video titled “women don’t produce music” during a time when she wasn’t feeling positive about making music in general. “That feels like so long ago. That video kind of catapulted me into who I became as a musician in terms of being on social media,” she reflects. “I was still trying to figure out what the point of social media was with music at the time. I was someone who didn’t have much of a digital presence.”

The video shows Kinsley moving around her apartment, tapping on everyday objects and recording them, before editing them together and producing an introduction for a song. “I was just literally like ‘fuck this’ - I’m just going to post it, whatever, I don’t care,” she laughs when thinking about it. Kinsley said that after uploading the footage, to improve her low mood that day, she dressed up, lit some candles and cooked herself a “really good meal” in her apartment to reclaim some control. For 2 hours, the video remained unwatched and nothing happened, but the footage ended up going viral. “I remember journaling a lot that day about what kind of music I wanted to make and what kind of musician I wanted to be,” Kinslet reflects, “then this video went insanely viral. It was very intense and I was laughing at myself later for even having these very dramatic thoughts.

Kinsley has spoken about the footage regularly enough in interviews, but the motive behind the video - a simple attempt to cheer herself up - has somehow been spun into a wider conversation about statistics. “I remember someone showing me a bio about myself that was like ‘Sarah began to produce after learning that only 2% of producers are women’ and that I wanted to change that statistic. That fact is so unbelievably false,” Kinsley comments. Whilst being linked to this important and progressive narrative is not a bad thing, it does diminish Kinsley’s existing accomplishments as a college student of audio engineering and production.

“I wasn’t invested in the wonderful art and craft of producing because I wanted to move the statistic forward to 2.1%,” she comments further. “I did it because I wanted to be involved in producing my own music and I wanted to have control and make decisions over these processes.” Kinsley explains that this desire stemmed from her beginnings as a vocalist who would contribute to “strange and beautiful dance tracks,” but who wanted to gain an in-depth understanding of the production processes. Whilst she is frustrated that the video’s intentions have been altered over time, she appreciates the impact it had. “I still look at that video fondly. It was the first time anything happened for me online.”

Balancing her digital presence as a musician and her true desire to connect with her fans as a songwriter is something that Kinsley is still figuring out. “For me, music has always been this very celestial, untouchable thing - so to have to dull that down and push it through the vessel of social media, sometimes it feels kind of strange,” she admits, “but, it’s also what I owe a lot of my life to. My ability to live and pay rent and be a human who gets to make music, is all due to social media in some regard. I have such contradicting thoughts everyday.” Kinsley is in no way being dismissive with her comments, she is simply expressing her attachment to an art form that she is thrilled to be working in.

Something that does provide Kinsley with complete clarity and pure connection is playing live. “Going on tour is very helpful for me, because you feel the presence of that connectivity in real life,” she explains. Even during the most stressful moments - which includes her bandmate’s guitar breaking and needing emergency dismantling and soldering by tech staff just minutes before her set when supporting Mitski - Kinsley is glad to be present. She is also humbled by the amount of fans who show up for her. “I’ve had experiences where people run up to me with tattoos of my lyrics on their arms or they tell me that they met one of their best friends at a show a few months ago,” she enthuses. “These are real experiences that are determining the fate of my life and of other people’s lives. That is wonderful for me. It’s a very strong reason to continue doing this, despite any kind of doubt. The shows are so incredible and the people that come to them are so excited to feel the music quite deeply.”

The power of friendship and platonic love is something she's acutely aware of, so much so that she has a song dedicated to it on Escaper. “I wanted to write “Starling” to pay tribute to two of my closest friends,” Kinsley reveals. “I think for most of my life, I’ve either been writing music about it or journaling about romantic love and trying to understand my place in it. I feel like I have not spent as much time understanding that the thing that has sustained me through a lot of grief and heartbreak is platonic love and friendship. That kind of relationship is one of the strongest forces on earth.”

The track takes its name from the sentiment that Kinsley can’t believe she found her friends under the stars in this “insane universe”. She wanted to give platonic love the big “gushy” treatment that is typically associated with songs about romance. “I feel like romantic love can be so overwhelming at times, but platonic love can be so incredible in such different ways,” she reflects. “It felt very necessary to pay tribute to that. I think more songs about that would be lovely.”