Q&A: Attaching the Personal to the Public, George O’Hanlon talks EP “The Storm”
PUTTING HIS HEART ON DISPLAY — UK-native George O’Hanlon shows vulnerability and rawness within the tracks on his debut EP, The Storm. Released on Harvest Records, this is a collection of four songs that are soft, delicate, and energetically balanced. O’Hanlon describes this album as a coming-of-age collection; writing about things that he was going through helped transmute some life lessons within these four songs.
The title track of the EP begins with only O’Hanlon’s voice over his acoustic guitar, but swiftly adds in soft percussion that eventually builds up to a bigger sound towards the end of the track. “The Storm” is nothing short of three minutes that sonically captures a nightly rainstorm. While he is still finding his footing, O’Hanlon has drawn inspiration from influences such as Bob Dylan, Jeff Buckley, and Thorn Yorke to give us an EP that explores his younger years.
Below we chat with soft-spoken O’Hanlon about who he is, how The Storm came to be, and what the EP means to him.
LUNA: You’re a relatively new artist — tell me about yourself.
O’HANLON: I’m a writer, a singer, and a guitar player. That’s about it really. I started with playing guitar and piano. I used to do classical stuff and school choirs, then I found some more rocky music that I liked. I discovered a Radiohead album — a Best Of. It was at the library when I found it and it became my own thing that I used to listen to on my Walkman. When I found less rocky stuff, like Bon Iver, that led me to songwriting.
LUNA: How do you balance being a singer/songwriter with being human?
O’HANLON: I’m working full-out at the moment, but I like going for walks and to the beach. On a Wednesday night, you can usually find me at the pub.
LUNA: What inspired the EP?
O’HANLON: It’s a collection of songs that were done at a certain point in my life. I think it’s nice these songs came out together — it’s me. I was discovering what I wanted my sound to be, and wrote about things that happened to me when I was a bit younger.
LUNA: Tell me about your creative process. I saw on Twitter that you draw things out while writing a song — how does that help with creating music?
O’HANLON: Sometimes I get stuff stuck in my head, like a lyric or one line, and I can’t think of what the actual song is. Having something visual to look at helps me visualize what would fit where. Sometimes it helps and sometimes it’s just a terrible drawing because I am not an artist by any means.
LUNA: What is your favorite part of the creative process?
O’HANLON: When you’ve got the song and you start playing that with other people. That’s a pretty good feeling once you hear it. A lot of stuff this year had to start acoustically, then we had to try and make it not an acoustic song. It is good to turn something that was quiet into something loud. I like playing with people and bouncing things off people.
LUNA: How do you overcome shyness to get deep “enough” when writing songs?
O’HANLON: It’s not so much of a problem to write something personal and deep. It’s easy to think about writing your own life, or someone else’s that’s similar. But some of the time, I try to think about it like it’s not me that I’m writing about.
I think that when you write something very personal, you’re not only giving away a song, you’re giving away your emotions and sometimes that’s very scary. Once a song is there, though, it’s not yours anymore. People have their own attachment to songs, and they won’t mean the same thing to someone else.
LUNA: What is your favorite song off of the EP and why?
O’HANLON: My favorite song to play live is “The Storm.” “This Town” is my favorite track — when I was writing it I kept thinking, “This is a good song.” It really changed my writing and what I was going to write like.
LUNA: What are you most looking forward to about this journey you’re about to embark on with music?
O’HANLON: Traveling. Hopefully with things getting better I’ll be able to see a bit of the world and play live. I always wanted to go to Dublin when I was younger. I’d love to go to Japan, America, and then somewhere very cold.
LUNA: What is something you learned about yourself in the last year and a half that you hope to carry with you?
O’HANLON: Believe in yourself a bit more. I think a lot of people have come to that this year, you know? We’ve had to spend a lot of time by ourselves or at home and realized we could get through things by ourselves.
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