The singer-songwriter market is a crowded one, so unless you are exceptional it’s hard to stand out. Orla Noble is that exceptional. Her most recent album is unfurl and when the chorus floats in on a magic hour cloud of strings in the opening track ‘see me free’ it’s hard not to swoon.
Orla Noble’s voice needs little adornment to hold your attention and sits front and centre in the mix while acoustic guitars and light-touch drums and bass act like calm water keeping everything afloat. You can hear the air running through Noble’s singing and it adds the feeling of susurration, like wind through leaves. There are resonant open tunings, rolling chord picking, and, like ‘hold me’ and ‘glimmer’, some occasional grit from an electric guitar. The live room sound of the piano on ‘don’t need it back’ is heart-breaking, as is the delivery of a plaintive melody
I also want to mention Rhona Macfarlane’s glorious string arrangements (recalling Robert Kirby’s work for Nick Drake) which seem beamed to us from a celestial plain. Macfarlane created these with accompaniment from Rachel Wilson on cello
In light of this outstanding debut album Joyzine contacted Orla to ask if she would be willing to unfurl a track a track explanation of the album. She was kind enough to provide a comprehensive and wonderfully illuminating dive into each track as well as the mind of the singer-songwriter.
1. see me free
This was my debut single, chosen as it was also the first song I ever managed to write. After years spent trying, this song unlocked something in me that was always there, just waiting to feel free enough. It’s very simply about being seen; about the deeply profound process of opening up to others. It took me a long time and a lot of hard work to learn that being seen doesn’t need to be threatening, it can be deeply fulfilling. Healing, even. ‘see me free’ was born from that lesson, and from a time period of experiencing that freedom for the first time; intoxicating as it was.
I talk of the ‘woman on the wall’ in the first lines of this song, and this can be taken literally. I love Gustav Klimt, and a print of Portrait of a Lady has hung on my bedroom wall for many years now. Whether the work of something supernatural or (more likely) shoddy blu-tack, this lady had a habit of falling off my wall whenever I cried. It began to feel like she was some kind of presence, as if her falling off the wall was an act of communication. Over time I wondered if bearing the brunt of being the only human to witness my pain was simply too much for her.
Interestingly the original Portrait of a Lady has her own unique story of being unseen. Klimt originally painted a different painting – Portrait of a Young Lady – of a woman who he had fallen deeply in love with. When she died, dealing with the pain of his loss, he painted over her with someone new – the woman we now know as The Lady. This painting hung in a gallery in Piacenza, Italy, from 1925, until it was stolen in mysterious circumstances in 1997. Twenty-three years later, in 2020, the painting was found concealed inside a wall within the gallery. Nobody knows why it was subjected to this fate – why a thief would remove it from a wall and hide it from view within touching distance. I feel for the poor Lady, and these days I try to look at her often. These days, she isn’t the only human face to see my pain – to see me.
2. crown shy
Written for a phenomenon observed in certain tree species (crown shyness), where they’re able to grow very closely alongside each other but (for reasons somewhat unknown) never actually touch. Humans do something like that too, all the time and in various ways.
The song is also about that déjà vu feeling of meeting someone and thinking “oh, it’s you again”; the familiarity and potency that some people believe is characteristic of past life connection. It’s about knowing innately that a connection is sacred and meaningful, but that it’s destined to be a certain way, in this lifetime at least.
Personally, I find comfort in the idea that the energy inside us isn’t limited to one earthly presence. For me this song captures the sadness of circumstance alongside the surrender of acceptance. We can’t find each other fully this time round, but maybe we can next time – as trees, as birds. Energy outlives us.
3. hold me
It’s hard to think of an insightful thing to say about the deeper themes of ‘hold me’. I could say that it’s about those universal experiences of loneliness, of connection, of pining. Most literally it’s a commentary on the idea of settling for an uninspiring or even painful relationship just for the sake of not being alone – something I don’t judge but have never felt compelled to do myself. I could try to tease out ideas about my use of Adam and Eve in the lyrics and how the layer of biblical reference says something much more profound about society’s lust and greed and hunger for forbidden fruit, whatever that means. But honestly, I didn’t put that much thought in at the writing stage. It just arrived like this.
It’s one of the songs on the record that I spent the least time on, but it ended up being one of my favourites. We layered up the parts in a few hours, using Madison Cunningham’s incredible Artificial Blonde pedal for that gorgeous tone. It really does feel like a sketch, and I’m sure it probably could have been a much better song if I’d spent longer with it at each stage, but there was something so freeing about just letting it flow. I find there’s often more character in a sketch; in that surrender of knowing time is limited and perfection unachievable. There’s something sacred about our very first instincts towards something, and this song holds pure instinctual energy for me.
4. don’t need it back
The song is pure vulnerability, both in its lyrics and its production. It charts the final resignation of feeling so indebted to someone that you’re willing to give them all you have, even for nothing in return. I’ve never been very good at having my own needs, yet ironically I feel this song comes from that raw, desperate need for being kept by someone, no matter the cost. Something in it says please let me love you and something more obscured says, with as much conviction, please love me back.
I wrote ‘don’t need it back’in the studio, the night before recording it. We recorded it live, and I added the sound of handwriting in a few places to add texture. I felt adding anything else would take away from the intensity of feeling, and as vulnerable as it is, I wanted this song to be a place where those feelings could exist openly and entirely.
5. mosaic
Happier moments are found in the next track, mosaic, which is all about friendship. Specifically, the kind of friendship which grows over years, where pieces of ourselves are shared and traded with others. Things like turns of phrases, mannerisms, habits, perspectives – collected up over time and eventually shared. What a beautiful, slow-burning intimacy and co-creation that is, not something you can rush or fabricate.
Sometimes I like to think of myself as a mosaic; where each piece forming the basis of me is collected from others along the way, the picture always growing and always shared. It’s easy to feel that we’re alone in the world, or that we are completely ourselves in a way that nobody else can access or understand. But really the selves that we’ve crafted are never only our own making – they’re the unique combination of years’ worth of interacting with the world; of adopting little pieces of others. The best pieces, often. We have so much to learn from each other.
The song was a couple of weeks old when we recorded it, and I’m so glad it snuck in right at the end of the process. The wonderful Rhona Macfarlane managed to write the string parts on such short notice (legend) and it felt right to me that the song would be formed on only strings – my guitar and a string quartet.
6. glimmer
‘glimmer’ is about starting to look up after a long period of looking down – being able to see the beautiful things that we might not notice or that we might take for granted, and the bittersweet transience that is inbuilt in beauty. Metaphorically, it’s about coming out of a period of darkness and beginning to notice all this light around me – light that was always there but concealed from view.
The lyrics “the sky turns pink for a while” describe the beautiful cherry blossom trees in Edinburgh, which turn the meadows pink as far as the eye can see for a few weeks every April. It’s a gorgeous sight, yet despite living right beside the meadows I would manage to miss them every year. Partly because I wasn’t looking up; because I wasn’t open to the world around me, and partly because beautiful things often don’t stay with us long.
7. saltwater
The B-side opens with ‘saltwater’, a song I’m truthfully still trying to make sense of myself. I am someone who likes to play the same chords over and over, and sometimes I feel insecure about it, assuming that it must mean I’m less of a songwriter for not ever switching it up. But I enjoy the loop – playing the same chords over and over is soothing to me.
I remember stumbling across these chords after a long and stressful day and getting lost in them for hours. At some point I put my guitar down and drew myself a bath. I got in, mind still swimming around these chords, and the song came to me in that sudden and all-consuming way. So, I got out, grabbed my guitar and perched on the edge of the bathtub, feet still in the water, and wrote saltwater in one (uncomfortable) sitting.
There is sadness in this song. I think there is also a lot of loneliness. In owning child and mother and daughter and sister I think I was feeling that I had to be everything for myself. I’m not entirely sure what the meaning of the elements are, nor why I missed out earth (sorry earth), but for now I don’t mind that the song is a bit of a mystery to me – it’s its own force.
8. always close
Similarly to ‘glimmer’, ‘always close’ is about starting to look up more, and this time, it was people I was noticing. It’s written about the feeling of looking at people around you and realising that there might be something there, a spark of possibility right under your nose, concealed for all of this time. It was an energy of noticing and optimism and open-mindedness that I was carrying throughout my whole life at the time of writing, and the excitement and possibility felt enlivening. Crushes give us energy.
9. flower
‘flower’ brings us back on cold, hard, solid ground again. It was written a few days prior to ‘don’t need it back’, born of the same feelings and beginning with the same request, “open me”. It’s about feeling powerless, and stuck there. But even without power, there was solace found in having company there.
As with track ‘hold me’ it felt important that ‘flower’ was given its own space, unobscured by over-production. I added a second guitar line and we left it there.
10. burn through
‘burn through’, is written from a woozy place. It holds such levels of wooziness that even in playing it live I’m transported to that specific place – the “place only she knows”.
It documents dissociation, something I’ve always struggled with. At the time of writing this record it gripped me often, often uncontrollably, and always intensely. The song is about being in that place – feeling so far away from your surroundings and from yourself. Being unable to swim to the light.
11. unfurl
And finally, the title track ‘unfurl’ was the second written of the collection, penned in one sitting on the 12th January 2025. That Christmas I had received a copy of Mary Oliver’s Devotions and for a while I developed a habit of picking it up every morning and letting the book fall open wherever it wanted to. I would read the chosen poem over a few times and try to take some of Mary’s energy forward with me into my day. That morning it was ‘I Go Down to the Shore’.
“I go down to the shore in the morning
and depending on the hour the waves
are rolling in or moving out,
and I say, oh, I am miserable,
what shall—
what should I do? And the sea says
in its lovely voice:
Excuse me, I have work to do.“
The problems experienced by individual human beings are so minutely inconsequential when compared to this ancient process of tide in, tide out. It can be so comforting to feel entirely insignificant – just a speck of dust and a blip of energy in the grand scheme of the universe – and for me this poem captures that feeling so well. If we are insignificant and fleeting, then chances are our joys and struggles are too. All we can do is be present, remembering that we are part of and born from these processes of nature, like the movements of the tide. That day, it felt like there was a song in it.
I have always loved the concept of writing to a future child. A particular example which springs to mind is Song For Our Daughter by Laura Marling and its own inspiration, a book of essays by Maya Angelou called Letter to My Daughter. I began writing unfurl as an address to a future child – relaying all of the things I might want to help them learn about life; that even in utter insignificance we can still take up our unique place in the world. But as I wrote, the stirrings within me soon made it very clear that there was a child inside of me, listening intently, curiously, and very much needing to hear my words. So, this song was for her: little Orla. It’s a deeply special one to me, and still moves me.
Huge thanks to Orla for a wonderfully perceptive insight into an album of such emotional and musical beauty.
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Introduction by Paul F Cook
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