Sophie’s stories of places and differing cultural styles

Sophie Coyle’s music often hinges on a sense of place. A Galway City native, long based in Dundalk, her work fuses the cultures and styles of both towns – and her latest project travels further afield.      Cuentista, the Spanish word for storyteller, brings eleven original tracks and two    covers of traditional Spanish ballads. It follows Sophie through her experiences travelling in South America.

In celebration of the album’s release, Sophie plays Galway’s Róisín Dubh on Thursday, April 18, with support from alt-folk ensemble SELK. The record itself arrives a week earlier, and it marks a long-awaited follow-up to her 2019 debut, Blame Me for the Storm.

“I can’t really get away from it – they’re always very story-based,” Sophie says of her songs.

“I think it’s what I love about writing songs and that format of condensing a story into a couple of verses and a chorus. It’s nice. It kind of cuts out all the chat.

“The South American influence – I travelled over there with a good friend from Galway after we’d finished college and we’d been working a year or two. We just headed over for a few months. I was over there for seven months in the end, and I got to see a good bit of South America. It has all the music that I love that I’d been listening to in the lead-up to it.

“David Byrne has an amazing compilation [Brazil Classics: Beleza Tropical]. It’s just an amazing introduction to music over there and the rhythms and different influences from African to Latin. We arrived over there in time for Carnival in Rio so what better way to start. And to get all that music in you.”

This is a record that took some time to come together. Since the recording process began, Sophie’s personal life has changed significantly. She had a section of the LP completed some time ago but afforded herself more time to allow the full catalogue to come together.

Pictured: Sophie Coyle... back home for a gig at the Róisín Dubh on Thursday, April 18.