Written by Ivona Homicianu
Move On With The Year is Alice Costelloe’s path to processing a tough past that until now was left in the shadows. In it, she faces the damage left by her father’s addiction and emotional absence head first— from the very beginning, Alice Costelloe refuses to comply with what is demanded of her. It is a clear affirmation of prioritising herself and her growth, even if she has to walk down unpleasant memories’ path to get to who she is now.
I congratulate her on the album and ask about her emotions surrounding the release date. “I’m so happy for it to be in the world,” she starts. “It is a weird thing when you finish something and have to wait a long time for it to be out. With interviews, I have had to try and tune back into what I was thinking over a year ago. I’ve had to take a moment to kind of remember what happened in the studio and how we made everything.”
The opening track ‘Anywhere Else’ is the first breath of air after holding it all inside. Using an 80s influenced indie art-pop sound, Costelloe delivers her candid and cutting words in a soft manner, reckoning with emotions that have always been there. When questioned about the song, which plays on the idea of rejecting all things someone might do for her, she explained, “Having done a lot of therapy and figuring stuff out myself, I realized that in some relationships, nothing you do will help. That was a freeing thing to realize. When you kind of start believing that, you realize that you also don’t have to accept anything from other people that doesn’t help you in any way. It was almost setting boundaries and realizing how damaging it can be to yourself if you are at the beck and call of someone, but nothing that you do will ever change them or improve things.”
How do you reconcile the love you have for a person that is integral to your being with the hurt they caused? Sometimes, getting it on paper and out of your head is the answer. The title track ‘Move On With The Year’ grapples with that truth, while longing for growth. With ‘Every Time,’ Costelloe frees herself of this self-proclaimed responsibility to take care of her parent as she liberates herself from this weight, allowing her music to conduct.
The 80s sound of the album caught my attention, which made me wonder about the artists that inspired her. Costelloe admitted that the 80s influence was more from Mike Lindsey’s production. Besides that, she cites Cate Le Bon, Weyes Blood, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Leonard Cohen and Harry Nielsen: “I’d worked with Mike before, and I knew he had this whole kind of like treasure chest of amazing synths and all different things, it was sort of like this coming together of what I imagine in my head. Classic influences from those legend acts, and then bringing together this modern enough 80s sound that he’s really into. That’s a byproduct of our collaboration.”
While the title of the album Move On The Year evocates interpretations from the listener, Costelloe explained her perspective on the decision. “I felt like I was trying not to be too negative. When I was writing, I was thinking this is about progress as much as it is about engaging with difficult feelings and memories. It’s about engaging with them so you can get to the other side of them. Move On With The Year summed up that, and it was genuinely where I was at the time when I was recording it. I was going through lots of difficult things, and was just thinking, if I can get this album out, I can move on with the year.” She remembers turning towards music since she was a teenager as a way to move on.
When asked if what matters most to her is immortalising moments of the past or if it’s simply a necessary process to put them aside, she remarked that she never thought of music as immortalizing memories. “I was thinking more about just actually being yourself and being open with the world.” She feels that she spent a lot of her childhood and some of her adult years hiding different parts of herself. “For me, engaging with memories and writing them out for other people to see was a part of just trying to be okay with all the parts of myself and my past. If I put it all out there, then the world is going to see a 360 degree vision of who I am, and then that’s done, and I don’t have to deal with it.”
“This whole record, I wrote whatever came naturally,” she continues. “I’ve spent so many years resisting writing this record. I genuinely think I’ve been resisting since I was a teenager. When I started writing it, I thought I’m going to write the songs that come naturally. If I never put it out, it would also be fine.”
When listening to the album in chronological order, there is a sense of relief that accompanies the ending as if the listener and artist go through the journey together. “It makes me really happy that you can hear that, because it did feel like that in the studio. It was a strange combination of feeling like you’re putting all these heavy memories and heavy subjects out there, but also in the studio was the most creatively fulfilled I’ve ever been, the more I’ve been able to collaborate freely, the most my opinions have been listened to. It was this relief where not only had I got this darkness out of my system, but I’d also experienced a beautiful collaboration, where someone really respected my opinion.”
The track ‘Too Late Now’ has an ominous outro that resembles a cinematic moment. It is a slow tempo estrangement from the past version of herself. It is the point of no return, with a sci-fi apocalyptic minute of drone sounds serving as the bridge between the two halves of the album. “[I told] Mike, the producer, ‘I trust you, and if you want to have a minute of atmospheric drones that you think enhances the album, I’m going to sit back and watch you do that.’ It was definitely meant to be a dark, sad song, but it struck a chord with Mike in the studio. When he started to go into this sonic darkness with all these noises, I think he was expecting me to turn around and be like, ‘No, a minute, a minute of droning is too much.’ But I was just glad he understood this record.”
‘Damned If You Do’ allows herself the freedom to figure out what she wishes for her future. With this one, she focuses on marriage and the indecision of following this tradition. She recognises it’s fine to not have all the answers, and at the same time, she advocates for questioning what you thought you knew through ‘Of Course I Know.’ Through letting go of all her baggage, she lets go of the secrecy and fear which held her back until now. ‘Feet On The Sand’ goes back to a childhood memory which mixes bittersweetness through the lens of being a child versus being an adult.
Before concluding the album, ‘If I Could Reach You’ sends one last signal for a better relationship with her father, while at the same time coming to terms with the reality of nothing changing. On the tenth track named ‘Is There Something (Goodbye),” Costelloe ends this journey with an emotional slow song. Move On With The Year built upon the pressure of this palpable relief.
‘Is There Something? (Goodbye)’ is perfect to close the project with. It has the finality of a journey surpassed, as well as the emotional nature fitting along with the record. Costelloe comments “It was the second to last song that I wrote, and it was the last song that we recorded. There is just something about it that really was messing me up in the studio in a way that the others hadn’t. No one had heard any of it until we were in the studio and I found it hard to sing. It felt much more personal than the others.” She reveals that she only did two takes of the vocals. “I just started to cry. On the record, my voice is breaking. I had to walk out of the studio. I’m really glad we left it until last, because it did actually take something out of me. I don’t think I would have been able to go back in and do a more upbeat song.”
When asked which song can she recommend for the Karma! Magazine Playlist, she replied, “The track that’s coming out with the album next month is ‘Feet On The Sand,’ and that is, like, one of my favorites on the album. It’s never made sense as a proper single, but I do think it sums up the album and the sound of the album.”
Her songwriting is intriguing as well, with lyrics such as “My friends are dropping like flies” referring to people around her getting married. “It’s a really hard thing to put into words and to not sound bitter. I’m so happy for everyone and whatever choices my friends make. I do find it hard to square feminism and marriage and some of the associations that are still there with marriage. And I know people who are married in completely amazing equal relationships. It was more about the rituals around weddings that can feel a bit…”
When asked which color she or her music would be, she responded with pistachio green. “It’s the first color that came to mind, but that is just my favorite color.”
To end the interview, there is a quote by Costelloe that I was interested in, which is “The older I get, the more I understand it’s not healthy to be hiding or to be ashamed of parts of yourself.” I inquired of the album’s impact and reinforcement in that realization. “I think it’s something that I still struggle with. I’m sure lots of people have this with their work and their personal self, but I work in an Orthodox religious community, so I do really have to split myself every day and be super polite, not swear, and lots of other things. I come home and I have to remember I’m a musician, I’m creative, I can swear if I want.”
She points out the difficulty of splitting herself between these two versions. “Sometimes going through the week and getting to the end of the week and realizing I’ve been sort of slightly being this more polite, polished version of myself, it can kind of make me feel a bit like… Who am I as a musician? The more that people understand your context, the closer the relationships you can have. I’ve really experienced that in the last couple of years. Often when you share whatever’s happened to you and your life with other people, you then find out more about them. I’ve got a handful of people that I’m 100% myself around, hopefully it will expand a bit further.”
Thinking back on the interview, Costelloe radiates openness and kindness. What struck me the most was the composure with which she responded to questions surrounding her art, given the difficult times that the songs on the album deal with. The impact of having created this record was palpable through the lightness she conveyed, which made the conversation pleasant and natural.
The relief of having done everything that was in your power and coming to the realisation that it’s time to let go of the past courses through this record. Costelloe’s soft yet invigorating interpretation is a path lit by complex familial feelings. It is clear that this record has been a guiding light for her process of healing and re-appropriating of her own self, and it now serves as such for those who are learning to put their own peace and wellbeing at the forefront of their mind.
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