Mental illness has always been a difficult topic to discuss openly due to the negative stigma associated with it. But as it is becoming increasingly prevalent and accepted, it is imperative that the subject be brought to the forefront of conversation. That is why UK based songwriter couple Sarah Holburn and Thomas Eatherton, along with Toby Shaer, created their band in earnest. The trio inspires an honest and candid dialog surrounding mental illness through their alternative, melancholic sound. Their new self-titled EP is both emotionally charged and thought-provoking. Aside from their music, the band is ambassadors for My Black Dog, a charity dedicated to providing free help for those who are grappling with suicide, self-harm, depression, and mental illness.

Where is your band based?
We’re from sunny Southend-on-Sea, Essex in the UK - although it’s rarely sunny nowadays!

What made you guys decide to form “in earnest”, and what is the significance of the name?
in earnest was an evolution of a previous band, so we’ve been playing together as a group for a while. With this change of name, we wanted to encapsulate the idea of being honest and sincere through our songwriting. Aside from the sincerity, ‘in earnest’ also means to do something better than before, which represents us as musicians having been in a lot of different bands and musical outfits in the past. We’re hoping this band will be our best and most meaningful.

How would you describe the music that you typically create?
We call ourselves ‘sad indie noise’ but we don’t like to put ourselves in a genre too much. There’s influences from rock, indie, folk, pop - all sorts! We like listeners to make up their own minds about our sound, and we keep it quite open so that we can steer towards other influences in the future. It’s mostly guitars, violins and synths with depressing lyrics at the moment.

What is your creative process like?
Usually myself (Tom) or Sarah will write a song and bring it to a rehearsal, and we’ll work on arrangement as a trio. Once we have a body of songs, we gig them like mad (on a usual year!) and then call upon our producer friend to record them, before we decide to release music to the world. The process between writing a song and releasing it can sometimes take two or three years, and it’s interesting to see how they evolve over that time. However, (and this is an exclusive!) in March we will be releasing a double single that was recorded in January, and one of the songs was only written in October, so this quick turnaround is new to us, but exciting all the same.

Your self-titled debut E.P centers around mental illness, a disease that is considered taboo by many. Why do you think it's important to write and sing about this serious issue?
Sarah has personally suffered from mental illness for over 10 years and has slowly become more vocal about the topic - firstly through a blog, and then it worked its way into her songs. We really think it’s important to speak up about difficult topics and describe them in a real and honest way - if we don’t do it, who will?

What inspired this album?
The EP was a bit of a patchwork-style piece of art. We gathered together about 30 song demos and rehearsed some of our favourites. We then just recorded them without really thinking about it too much, but they somehow all have this gravity that makes them make sense together. Some of the themes included are nostalgia, hope, hopelessness and mental illness.

Your song “come upstairs” is heartbreaking. Can you tell us a little bit about this song?
‘come upstairs’ details the struggle of living with someone who experiences mental illness and how difficult it can be to always be relied upon and looked to for positivity, even when you might not be feeling great yourself. It was a cathartic song to write and being able to put such honest words out there actually really helps process feelings of hope, hopelessness and trying to figure out how to help our loved ones when they are struggling. It has a kind of stream of consciousness to the lyrics to reflect an outpouring of emotion and by the end of the song, the depression passes over into a calm, clear-headed feeling.

Your band does a lot of work to promote mental health awareness. Can you tell us more about that, and why this is important to you?
Again, it affects Sarah personally, which then has a knock-on effect on the rest of the band in some way or another. We think it would be silly to ignore this in our art as it’s so strongly felt and relevant to us. The more we all collectively do as a society to speak up about mental health, the more progress we can make to understand it and educate ourselves. It’s pretty difficult when it’s an illness that you can’t see, and sometimes can’t even explain.

You have recently become ambassadors for a charity called My Black Dog. Can you tell us a little bit about My Black Dog and what inspired you to work with them?
We knew we wanted to do more to increase mental health awareness, and we stumbled upon My Black Dog - they run a free online peer-to-peer chat service, which is currently the only chat service in the UK that solely relies on volunteers who have experienced mental health difficulties themselves. The understanding that that experience brings to help users of the service is so valuable, knowing what we know about the mental health system in the UK.

Have you been on their hotline?
Fortunately, we haven’t needed to use their service yet, and we don’t want to use up a volunteer’s time on trying it out! But we are familiar with how their service works and we know it will do so much for people who need someone to chat to, especially during the Covid lockdowns.

The pandemic and lockdowns have been very hard for mental health. How would you like to see people receive more mental health care during this time?
Especially in the UK, when the NHS is at crisis point, it’s very difficult to even know where to turn for mental health care. Even at a time before Covid, we know from experience that mental health care is often painstakingly slow, or unaffordable. It really is the amazing work of charities like My Black Dog who bridge the gap between realising you might need help and talking to someone with shared experience. Hopefully an increase in the usage of these services means that they can find more funding in order to provide help to more people.

What advice do you have for those who are currently suffering from some sort of mental illness, especially in the light of COVID?
First and foremost, talk to someone. Whether it’s a friend, family member or an online volunteer, sharing how you feel is one step closer to being able to feel better. It’s easy to feel like you’re alone in this very secular time, but talking about your struggles will help you to feel more understood and will lead you on a path to getting some help or advice.

How are you staying positive during shelter in place?
Sarah and I live together, so we’ve been able to play music with each other through lockdown! We also started doing yoga every day since March, and it really has done wonders for both our physical and mental health.

What is your motto in life:
It would probably be something to do with dogs, as the three of us all love dogs! Perhaps I’ll quote Sarah from our song ‘put me under’... “I’ll never be lonely with a dog beside.”

To learn more about in earnest, please follow them via the following platforms:
www.inearnest.co.uk
Handle for all social media platforms:
@inearnest, Spotify, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube.

All photos produced by Soundcastle Media

in earnest Uses the Power of Music to Battle Mental Illness