In conversation with Siobhán Winifred: Making sad feel big on the ‘Don’t Do Well Alone’ EP.
“I want to tell people that things get better,” Siobhán Winifred laughs as she prefaces a first listen to her landmark debut EP Don’t Do Well Alone.
The Dorset-born star is speaking to under the radar on the eve of the project’s release, huddled up in her grandmother’s West Country flat. “I’m mainly excited,” she admits. “I have all the normal nerves and feel the pressure but I’m also too busy to stress about it. It’s been a long time coming.”
Siobhán has reason to warn listeners of the heartbreak that awaits over the EP’s five tracks. She isn’t afraid to sit in her feelings but Don’t Do Well Alone transcends your normal heartbroken bedroom pop.
“I do feel there is a sadness to the EP but there’s a hopefulness too,” the singer admits. “It’s captured a moment in time and that’s important but I hope the EP shows people that others feel the things they do too.”
Don’t Do Well Alone opens on its most optimistic on the single ‘Lungs’. A track that has pulled in swarms of new fans since release, there’s an alchemy to the rising star’s songwriting. “I’m always quite sceptical and worry everyone might think it’s rubbish,” Siobhán chuckles when asked if she knew she’d cooked up something special with the EP opener.
“I did feel ‘Lungs’ felt like I was really finding my feet. I really enjoyed writing it. I had always wanted to make a song that sounds like that with the big indie rock chorus and drums. It gave me a confidence boost that I can make music like that.”
It’s hard to pinpoint what exactly it is about ‘Lungs’ that makes for such a compelling flick. Over its three-and-a-half minutes, the singer teeters between the vulnerability of past heartbreak and a reckless desire to fall in love again.
With its complicated cocktail of emotions, it’s no surprise when Siobhán admits that her usual songwriting tact of waiting for distance before putting pen to paper was thrown out the window for that hit. “This was the first one I’ve written when I was in it and experiencing what was happening,” she confides in under the radar.
“When I sent it to who it’s about, he commented that it was still really sad. That’s kind of how I live my life, I can go from extreme to extreme very easily and I didn’t want to paint it as this perfect thing. I feel everything very strongly and it captures that.”
What becomes clear on a journey through Don’t Do Well Alone is the artist’s penchant to build her pensive indie sound into stadium-sized anthems. ‘Stay For Good’ is one of the best examples of that as down-and-out pleas to avoid a break up turn into somewhat of a battle cry in the blink of an eye. “I love a big ending,” Siobhán admits. “That’s probably the bit I’ve stolen from Rufus Wainwright. His songs have these huge euphoric and orchestral endings and I guess I like to try and recreate that feeling in my songs.”
“I also don’t let my slightly timid voice sometimes hold me back from making the music I want to make. I don’t have to match the production to my voice, you can work with it and it might be unexpected but that’s interesting I hope!”
As well as Wainwright, Siobhán confesses to being Avril Lavigne’s ‘number one fan’ growing up and feeling compelled when first hearing the vulnerability and mental health of Sam Fender. Lyrically, the singer’s muse is Phoebe Bridgers and that’s easy to hear in the striking detail of the EP.
That’s perhaps never more the case than on ‘Killers’, which is revamped on release with a feature from Stevie Bill. “Your bite hurts just as much as your bark,” Siobhán muses on that track’s searing takedown of a former foe.
“It’s just about someone who wasn’t very nice on a daily basis,” she shares when asked for more detail on the song’s backstory. “I guess I compared them to a serial killer which is arguably too far…
“It’s very specific to me but it’s universal as a feeling too, going to any length to justify someone’s behaviour towards you. I know I’m not the only person that does that.”
Having jumped on stage with Siobhán to perform the track when supporting Stevie Nicks at BST Hyde Park, Stevie turns the track into a duet of friends supporting one another. “Our lives have really intertwined without realising,” Siobhán says. “The first ever gig she did in the UK I was on the bill, we both supported Nieve Ella and Stevie Nicks, we’re both going on tour at the same time. I love how Stevie’s verse is slightly different in the intonation and not just different words.”
It’s impossible not to speak to Siobhán about the wave of new indie artists turning heads in the music industry right now. The likes of Nieve Ella, Alessi Rose, Hannah Grae and Erin LeCount are just some of those regularly supporting one another on the rise and picking up a following of shared music fans too. “I feel so lucky to be part of this wave of women - there’s so many guys and other people too but I look around the women that I’m a peer of and it feels really special,” Siobhán reflects.
“In the indie genre, seeing girls on stage with a guitar, that hasn’t always been a thing. It’s a really special thing and everyone is so supportive of each other. I feel like it’s so easy as a group of girls to be encouraged to tear each other down and it’s none of that. I think we are all inspired and encouraged by each other.”
Even when surrounded by so many fellow artists, the lows come with the highs. On the EP’s title track, Siobhán lets listeners in on the moments following shows or live streams with swarms of online followers - “You’re all I ever needed but I fall apart when left alone,” she sings on the chorus.
“I was spending a lot of time on my own and it felt like gigs were my entire social life and world,” Siobhán tells under the radar. “I’d come back and watch videos of the gig and pick them apart.”
“I took away the high that I was feeling through self-criticism, I was ruining my own enjoyment of it. I am an independent person so it felt weird to say I don’t do well alone, because I do, but everyone needs community and company.”
Don’t Do Well Alone closes on the EP’s most striking track and one that Siobhán can’t help but grin about when sharing her excitement to release it into the world. Clocking in at over four minutes long, ‘Keep Sweet’ is an ambitious test of the star’s songwriting as it reaches a new expansive high.
Starting off conversational with bare vocals and a guitar, there’s an apathy in the way the singer ignores the imminent cloud of a break-up hanging over her head. By the time the track reaches its climax, that cloud packs a thunderstorm punch with a live cellist, two guitars and layers of vocal screams.
“When I wrote it, there was so much anger in it and I wanted it to have this big release at the end,” Siobhán says. “It’s the one on the EP that feels most like a piece of art. It’s so special. It’s all the stuff you keep inside coming out. It was perfect to close the EP, it feels like the ending is taking you to where my music is going in the future. So much work went into that song. It truly felt like a release.”
You can listen to ‘Don’t Do Well Alone’ below: