Sullivan’s break came in 2021 with the release of debut single ‘So It Is’, a gorgeously simplistic song released in demo form that has since gone on to pass 450,000 streams on Spotify. “I wrote it and then a couple of days after I recorded a demo in my garden, and that’s what you hear on the record,” she says, with the instinctive and powerful first take harnessing more beauty and connection than a polished studio version. As will soon become known about Sullivan, the intimacy and stark vulnerability of her songs in their embryonic forms can often prove the most powerful.
While a lot of her first songs were inspired by her childhood home of Lewis – the coordinates of the local beach, where a lot of her adolescent soul-searching was done, are tattooed on her arm – debut EP ‘123 Degrees East’ tracks the year after she and her family moved off the island in the summer of 2020, and the time of intense change that followed. Leaving the island and going through heartbreak simultaneously, a period of introspection followed, one that allowed her to come to terms with these new feelings and experiences.
“At the time, I don't think I realised how much I needed that time on my own and a growth period. I would take myself out walking and go running and walk the dogs. I'd go swimming in the river, I'd write songs, I'd sit in my little window and just watch the sunsets and listen to the birds. I just had this revelation and life opened up so much more. I started feeling so much more and becoming really, really in tune with myself.”
Based around hearty acoustic guitars and gorgeous, layered vocals, the EP sees Sullivan tell stories of herself and others with a reflective tone that’s deeply personal but also proves universal. Through the swelling beauty of ‘What A Life’, sprightly skip of ‘Expectations’ and atmospheric closer ‘To Live’, she evokes her latest inspiration, Laura Marling, while emerging as a unique voice all of her own.
