Interview: Elle Leon Gallagher

Ahead of her Debut Album, coming in October, we sit down with the exceptional Elle Leon Gallagher to discuss the making of the single 'A Chara' (which means 'Friend' in Irish), and we get some fantastic answers in return! Be sure to follow Elle along on the way.

What inspired you to write a song about friendship? 

I was pretty run-down during the summer of 2023. A long-term relationship had come to an end, I was couch-surfing looking for a place to live and hopping from one dead-end job to another. On paper, it looked like my life was falling apart yet I was very much held together and supported by the beautiful people in my life. 

Is the track about a specific person or more a collection of memories?

Just as the other songs on the album, this one came about from specific circumstances with certain people in mind. I was kindly invited to do an artistic residency in InLoft in the small Catalan village of Copons during the summer of 2023, where I set out to work on some material for this album. I invited Guille Harrison (close friend and co-producer) to join me for the craic first and foremost but it became clear as day that I wanted to make this album with him because of our unique personal and musical trust. Straight after that residency and amidst being in the thick of personal mishaps, I was extremely lucky to be able to take time out and make it back to Ireland. My group of friends had planned a trip to Kilkee and like many Irish friend groups a few of us had been living abroad for years, so all of us coming together is in itself rare and quite special. 

My last stop of that summer was to my hometown Kilcullen, where I was left with time on my hands to go on walks, to think and to reconnect. I wrote the song in my back garden one evening before meeting up with my childhood best friend Zarah, seeing her always feels like coming home to myself. She's the girl beside me in the single cover and she's the person who mostly feels like a part of me at this stage in our lives. 

Like all art, songs take on another life once they leave the interpersonal crafting stage, and I've never experienced this so much as I do with A Chara. Since it's out and not mine anymore I can now say that it's a declaration of love and forever as a given within the friendships that really shape us for the better. It's my favourite to sing live because its meaning shifts and ties to people I really love and am moved by. 

How did producing it yourself with Guille Harrison shape its sound?

Producing with Guille has been above all a supportive and immensely fun experience. He's the first friend I made here in Barcelona and we've been sharing music and different projects together for nearly 10 years. So I'd say what really shaped the sound is the belief we both have in one another and the playful curiosity that the year and a half of making the record brought about. It was my first album to self-produce and it was his first full album to engineer and co-produce. We have similar tastes a lot of the time but with this song in particular I wanted a nice, floaty but dense atmosferic feel and I wanted the guitar riffs to contrast that with a roughness about them. Guille really brought a lot to the table to capture that with influences of more of a psych-rock nature as opposed to some other album tracks.  

Has living between Kildare and Barcelona changed how you see connection and distance?

Oh absolutely. I've been based in Barcelona for nearly a decade now and it's really brought about a profound gratitude for the company I keep in both places. Unfortunately at the moment the cost of living and housing crisis in Ireland has made it impossible for me to seriously consider coming back and I've had to look at home through a different lense. I've found it more beneficial to count my many blessings within making a home for myself in a diverse city, learning and living through its languages and customs and making meaningful connections and plenty of music. Something that's become really apparent in my experience is that the connections from home for the most part have only been strengthened through the years of distance. It's something I'm really surprised about actually. There's something about the Irish and really looking out for one another that goes beyond surface-level friendships just to tick the boxes.

What ties the songs on your upcoming album together? 

Definitely a sense of vulnerability and a new-found strength in that. I think I'm starting to see how both come hand-in-hand despite it feeling like they're polar opposites. I needed to find a new level of honesty within myself to have it feel now as if it has nothing to do with me, if that makes any sense. That feeling is quite new and beautiful. Before knowing how this album would turn out I jotted down some things I wanted to write about and a lot of my curiosity leaned towards relationships; childhood friendships, distanced friendships, family dynamics, loss, romantic relationships, potential ones and the fascination I felt with the subconscious at the time. I went through quite a transformative couple of years and it seemed that a lot of people around me did too. What really held me were the friendships I have and I wanted to dedicate A Chara as an album to that sentiment, both in the artistic sense and in a salute to this time in my life. 

What do you hope people feel when they hear this track?

In the best case scenario it would be absolutely class for people to feel embraced and seen for being themselves fully, worthy of this big love I'm singing about and hopefully nudged to go tell someone you love them too. Something I find endearing but pretty tragic actually is that especially within friendships it's often taken as a given that there's this massive withstanding love holding it together, so massive it goes without saying and that's a real shame.