HOT FOR 2017: We meet rising Cork artist Lyra

When Cork-raised, London-based Lyra released her debut EP This is WILD back in April 2016, it didn’t immediately send huge shockwaves through the Irish music scene. The EP began as less of a wave and more of a ripple. Then towards the end of last year, as Lyra made her live debut in Ireland, that ripple began to spread.

Anyone who watched this Christmas’ Late Late Toy Show may have crossed paths with Lyra’s ‘Emerald’, which cropped up in the teaser for RTE drama Striking Out. Currently high up in the charts of songs trending on Shazam, it’s clear that those who hadn’t yet heard of Lyra are beginning to listen.

From the bunker of her studio deep in central London, the singer admits that she had no idea that her music was gaining any attention back in Ireland, never mind being picked up by the national broadcaster. “I was here in England at the time,” she says, “annoyed that I couldn’t get access to RTE because I love the Toy Show. Then all of a sudden my phone started going crazy and I thought something terrible had happened. But it turned out to be my friends saying, ‘We’re watching the Toy Show and your song is on it!’”

Talking with Lyra, you get a sense that she isn’t driven by a craving for publicity – that however many likes, shares, tweets and listens she gets, her focus will never waver from the simple task of making music. I ask her if she had any doubts about leaving Ireland to pursue her career.

“Sometimes I’d arrive back in London having been on a three hour journey,” she replies, “and I’d really miss Ireland and the ease of living there. But I do love working in London. There are no other Irish artists I know who are out here doing the same thing as me, so being the only one makes me feel a lot stronger. I feel like I can do things the way I want, because I’m not out there comparing myself to anyone else.”

I imagine that London musicians who worked with Lyra had no idea what had hit them when she first waltzed onto the scene, with her bubbly Cork accent, powerful vocals and talent beyond her years.

She smiles as she recalls: “It’s funny, people out here have stopped telling me, ‘You need to say things this way or that way or pronounce your ‘th’s’ properly.’ At this stage they’ve come to respect that I’m an Irish artist and they just let me get on with it. People used to ask me, ‘Why don’t you try ad libbing or put in a riff’, and I flat out told them that I wasn’t that type of singer. I’ve never heard an Irish singer doing a riff or an ad lib. They’ve started to respect the fact that I’m better when I do things that I’m comfortable with.”

Lyra’s exultant first song from her EP, ‘Rabbit In The Headlights’, is a rebuke to those who would make her sing in a style that is not her own, and a celebration of her own “glorious” voice.

But while her music speaks volumes about just how comfortable and commanding she is in the studio – each of the four songs on This Is WILD is a thoughtfully textured, harmoniously moving soundscape – when I first met Lyra back in September 2016, the still-fledgling singer had doubts (and more than enough nerves) about how her style would transfer to a live audience back at home.

“When I got on stage to do the Cork gig – the first time performing my own music in front of people from home – I was beyond nervous,” she reflects. “Then the second I sang that first note, it was as if I was singing to nobody. Even my sound man who was from Ireland said, ‘God Almighty, you really let all the bells loose there.’ I don’t think my friends and family really understood what I was doing up until that point – they didn’t know why I was rushing back and forth to London all the time.

“Then at the end of that first gig I had people coming to me and saying, ‘We get it now.’ And that meant so much to me, because I was used to having friends ask me, ‘When are you coming back? When are you going to be finished with this?’ I know that I’ve missed out on a personal life because of what I’ve been doing, but I’m absolutely focused on trying to crack into this industry. So for people to turn round and say, ‘We get why you’re not at this or that, why you’ve missed birthdays or aren’t out partying as much’, that means a lot to me.”

Lyra’s single-mindedness is evident even behind her warm, casual demeanour; she tells me that it comes from a childhood immersed in music. “Whether I was going to be a songwriter or a music writer for movies or for TV, I wasn’t sure,” she notes. “But I knew early on that I always wanted to be in the game. I’ve been performing in things from such a young age and I told myself I never wanted to stop. Then I came to that age where, if you don’t want to stop, you have to become professional. So that’s what I’m doing now.”

As a musician and performer, Lyra belongs to a long lineage of Irish female singer-songwriters that encompasses luminaries such as Enya and Sinead O’Connor.

“Enya has always stood out to me for her harmonies and for the magic in her music,” she enthuses. “There’s this haunting element that she loads into every song, and she’s great at making these big cinematic sounds. I love that and want to emulate it. Then you have Sinead O’Connor with her rawness and realness. No matter what people tell her or say about her, she sings whatever way she wants.”

I point out that, with her last comment, Lyra could well be talking about her own efforts in London. She laughs self-effacingly and shouts back, “Oh God! I fecking wish!”

And yet, I think there’s a kernel of truth in the observation. Lyra admits that it wasn’t easy to stick to her guns in the sometimes harsh environment of London, but her determination has kept her going. Does she call the city home now?

“No,” she pointedly responds. “I’ll always think of Cork as my home no matter what. I know that this year I’ll have to be in London a whole lot more, but no matter how much time I spend here, whenever people ask me where I’m from, I’ll always say Cork. London is just a commute to the next step.”

Where that next step will take Lyra in the long term is still guesswork. But ‘Hot For 2017’ being the nature of the issue, I ask Lyra if the New Year might bring more music, to which she replies in the affirmative. “I’m finishing up some new songs which will be released in the spring,” she explains. “Then there’s going to be a lot more shows, because I want to get a sense of what people think of the new stuff live.”

Writing after my last interview with Lyra, I noted that the singer rarely talks up her own talents in person, and wrote that the EP does all the talking necessary. Having seen her perform since then and go on to reach a wider audience, I’m compelled to say the same thing again; if you haven’t yet been mesmerised by Lyra’s This Is WILD, you need to get on it.