Rachel Sermanni on the release of her fifth album ‘Dreamer Awake’ at Glasgow’s Assai Records

Rachel Sermanni launched her UK tour with an in-store performance at Glasgow’s Assai Records on Sauchiehall Street to celebrate the release of her fifth studio album, Dreamer Awake. Her latest piece of work is a product of the pandemic, becoming a mother, love and grief.

We caught up with the singer-songwriter following her performance. Rachel hails from the Scottish Highlands and is heavily pregnant with her second child.

“This album was recorded late last year but much of the writing occurred two years ago. It follows in the shape of experiencing almost not wanting to lose but recognising that loss is occurring. I guess conceptually, it was very much a personal experience of delving into my subconscious, subliminal world, the stories I’ve lived with for a long time. Then going into stories that have been passed down, whether that be your parents or further, there’s explorations of that. Essentially, it’s an album of self-exploration and the exploration of loss, grief, death and rebirth.

“Drawing from my own experiences is vital in terms of singing and writing songs. Basically, I’ll have experiences in life and they’ll get processed, maybe sometimes transmuted and transmitted through songs. It’s a process of me trying to understand things or coming to clarity with things.

“Compared to my first attempts at releasing music there’s definitely a less of caring about what other people think, and therefore I think the way that affects songwriting is things get simplified. There’s less of a wanting or needing to please or impress. That does domino affect into the actual music because there’s a sense of having confidence whereas before I was looking for confidence through other people telling me this song’s good or whatever. With this one I knew what songs I wanted and I knew what band I wanted and despite having a little bit of a lack of confidence because I’d spent a lot of the years, due to Covid and motherhood, not playing with people, but even that I think there’s a progress in the fact that I’m not as good a musician as I once was because it simplified everything again and brings it backwards in how your delivering the songs. It almost expands the horizons a little bit.”