Literature and Drama editor Laura Kiely sits down with multidisciplinary artist Pippa Molony to discuss her debut EP ‘Hungry Ghost’.
Image credit: Luke Conroy
“There’s an interview with Joni Mitchell where she says: “I'm a painter first. I kind of apply painting principles to music.” She’s one of the most legendary voices in music. To think that she doesn’t really consider herself a musician primarily was crazy to me. But I love that idea.” This is something I knew not about Joni Mitchell, but it’s what Pippa Molony energetically tells me on the crisp, quiet Sunday morning of November 3rd.
Pippa is a Dublin-based multidisciplinary artist whose deep, sonorous vocals are showcasing echoes from musicians like Grouper, Beach House, Just Mustard, and I’ll say it, Lankum’s Radie Peat; to name but a few. Although it’s not that straightforward; her music doesn’t feel so much like music as it does also a relaying of some eerie, unearthly folk narrative. Storytelling feels absolutely crucial to Pippa’s vocals, her voice is inviting us to some other place; a place we are not quite sure about though enticed all the same.
Born and raised in Castleknock, Pippa moved to Dun Laoghaire in 2018, where she attended IADT’s film school.
After graduating from Film and Television Production in 2022, it is clear that she carries her talent for storytelling, highly stylised visuals and atmospheric brilliance to her debut EP ‘Hungry Ghost’ which launched to much anticipation on October 18th.
Image credit: Jilly McGrath. Pippa performing at the launch gig for ‘Hungry Ghost’ at Daylight (a member owned arts space in Glasnevin.)
‘Hungry Ghost’ is shaped by a myriad of influences. Pippa’s partner in crime is prolific producer Rory Sweeney, who is also an IADT film school graduate. We are shown an eclectic mix of proclivities between the two, which Pippa relays as a “meeting of two minds”. The two formed a personal and professional relationship in college, which helped ensure that the recording environment was open and safe. “Rory and I have a lot of trust and faith in each other”, she tells me, “so I could sing whatever I wanted and never feel judged. It was a very safe space, and I truly felt that this fostered pure creativity with the tracks.”
‘Hungry Ghost’ cradles seven tracks with spectral, shadowy textures and a darkly immersive ambience that ultimately conjures a haunting yet alluring soundscape in which the listener is enveloped in otherworldly possibilities. The intro track ‘You Dream of Me’ is a fleeting, eldritch, goosebumps-inducing spoken word recording. I asked Pippa if this was the beginning of a story, where the seven tracks narratively lead into one another.
“Yes, I feel this song evokes a very strange feeling”, she tells me, “The panning of the words from left to right is certainly unnerving, something Daniel Callanan (Local Gods) added to the production. I liked this idea of a strange, nonsensical dream as music. It’s as much of a story as any dream is; the lyrics are full of mystical images and feeling, but the shifting story is unable to be followed. It is incomplete.”
Pippa’s innovative qualities are demonstrated once again on the 4th track ‘Dream Rec 002’, which she describes as remnants of a dream that are “too real to be fake”. The audio recording tells of Pippa's real-life dream as she remembered it that morning. “You can sort of tell I’m half asleep,” she jests, "and the story makes very little sense. But I get a weird feeling when I listen to this track, and the instrumental Alex Denton (2ManyColours) composed really helps with this.”
The voice recording is accompanied by a resonant, rumbling drone-based soundscape that feels reflective of the ocean itself, the monolithic waves crashing over Pippa’s voice is heavily felt.
To answer my question, she explains how “overall, the 7 songs are tied together by their similar themes: dreamlike states, dissociation, longing to be somewhere other than where you are, a longing to be in another realm almost.”
This idea is lucidly revealed in tracks ‘Angels’ and ‘St Johns’. The lyricism in ‘Angels’ signifies a longing for a life beyond our own realm: “I had a dream of my angels / Sky blue light followed / Wherever we were / One gives no trouble / One was alone / And she smiles as she gives me her wings to borrow.” Keeping with this thematic harmony, ‘St. John’s’ evokes a lack of closure and deep dissatisfaction with one’s present environment: “You don’t see me cry / You don’t say goodbye / and I write myself between worlds / You promised me time.” Escorting both of these songs are music videos that demonstrate the haunting essence of the lyrics through highly stylised folky visuals that Pippa says “took hours of digging through Dúchas.ie, specifically the National Folklore Archive’s ‘School Collection’.”
Still from ‘Angels’ music video.
The eponymous track ‘Hungry Ghost’ is derived from Pippa’s inspiration for the EP as a whole: “I see the 7 (8 if you include ‘Spring Came’ which you can find on SoundCloud or Bandcamp) songs as manifestations of the idea of the Hungry Ghost in Buddhism, perhaps best encapsulated by the songs ‘Spring Came’ and ‘Angels’; this idea of consumption, that I am always in search of something more, some extreme state of being, and maybe never feeling fully satisfied.”
Pippa feels that as an artist ‘Angels’ and ‘St Johns’ best represent her. “I remember listening to the first demo of ‘Angels’ and feeling that Rory and I really made something different”, she shares, “and the fact I could incorporate an Irish folk story into the music video was very special, given my interest in those stories.”
“Additionally, ‘‘St. Johns’ I find very musically interesting and emotional. When I edited the video, I noticed how I found the song much sadder once the visuals were added. Before the song and video felt very separate, so when I put them together, I was surprised at how well they fit and how moved I was on first viewing by what the visuals and music were doing together.”
Image credit: Pippa Molony, BTS of the ‘St. Johns’ music video.
“‘St. Johns’ is a mad song”, Pippa quips, “I like to use books, poems, articles and images to inspire the lyrics in the moment while I am improvising a vocal idea. For this song, I was taking specific words from a Thomas Pynchon novel Bleeding Edge I picked up from Rory’s bookshelf, to create some semblance of a story. I was imagining someone returning to a place only to find that what they are looking for is no longer there. I imagined someone missing another person, for they were not there when the narrator returned to the place they had once been able to find them.”
The lyricism speaks to a sense of abandonment and loneliness that you can see play out in the music video. The video depicts a young farmer isolated on his farm attempting to conjure up companionship through adorning inanimate objects and putting on clown performances for them; the concept which director Jilly McGrath came up with.
When I said Pippa’s voice is inviting us someplace else, it is perhaps because this EP feels so centred around the prospects of escapism. The lyricism feels like a serene match with Pippa’s ethereal vocals, the instrumentals conducive to her invitation.
She tells me how she felt pressured at the crossroads of choosing one singular path: “I often get fearful of my future, and whether I should just throw all my energy into one medium.
But music, writing and filmmaking are all just storytelling; it’s all coming from the same desire to tell a story. I think I see music this way. To make the listener feel something through the language of music, by expressing myself through that form.”
I assure Pippa that this is not just a real possibility for her, but a vocational purpose; her talents are too multifaceted to be confined to one single form of artistic expression. I tell her why not do it all? It has certainly worked so far.