Park Hills Circle Surfaces From the Depths on Luminous New Single “Clearning” – EARMILK

“Clearing” is the first glimpse into your upcoming album All of a Sudden—what emotional or sonic “world” did you want listeners to step into first?

I hope to offer a warm sense of home – resilient well-being in self and community – through my music. The expansiveness of the natural world runs deep in my songs, influenced by having grown up in Alaska and Ireland, places that hold so much gravity and history in their mountains and bodies of water as well as in their cultural communities. An organic, melodic atmosphere of movement is in the soul of my music. Listeners may find that peace and meditation in the album, but also the dynamics of trying to find our way back to what we hold to be most true and sacred, which isn’t always a linear or smooth path.

You describe Park Hills Circle as blending atmospheric indie textures with classical influences—how do your background in classical guitar and soprano training shape your songwriting today?

The lifelong musical vocabulary (theory, harmony, melodic form, etc.) that I have through classical training has given me a rich palette with which to paint in an expansive, cross-genre way. As a young child, I started out with the Suzuki method (first learning to play piano by ear), which has also informed songwriting and composition that draw from deep listening and improvisation. My background as a classical guitarist influences my fingerstyle patterns and layered textures of writing. And my background as a soprano, in art song and opera, lends itself to an appreciation for nuance and intention in vocal colors, dynamic, and phrase shaping. 

The track features layered vocal harmonies, synths, fingerstyle guitar, and saxophone—how do you approach arranging such a wide palette without losing emotional focus?

I see each instrument in a song as a character in the story – so every part has a distinct role and is part of a larger conversation. I enjoy the intention – and also sometimes the puzzle! – of figuring out which space each instrumental [character] should occupy, so that the pieces are complementary and not competing with each other. For example, sometimes a saxophone line becomes an echo or extension of an earlier melody in my voice; this happens in the outro of “Clearing”, with saxophonist Dustin Laurenzi’s shaping around the line I sing in the song’s chorus.

There’s a strong sense of place in your bio—drawing from Ireland and Alaska—how do those landscapes show up in your music, consciously or unconsciously?

Question 1 gets at this, I think, is it possible to combine the two?

“Clearing” feels like a title that suggests release or openness—what does the word mean to you personally in the context of this song?

I’m an identical twin, and through that, I feel hard-wired for emotional intimacy, collaboration, and often, leaping into the deep end of relationships. This is a beautiful gift and way of moving through the world, but sometimes becomes overwhelming. “Clearing” captures a desire for independence while also trusting new closeness with a romantic partner – finding a balance to feel spacious and full as oneself, with room to keep growing. Ideally I think we all want to arrive at a place where we can feel secure within ourselves and also within friendships and relationships; sometimes that requires letting go and holding close all at once, so that push-pull and tension is part of this song, too.

You’ve worked extensively in interdisciplinary performance with Maeve & Quinn—how has blending poetry, storytelling, and music influenced how you write songs as Park Hills Circle?

I began studying music from a really young age, and performing has always been the space within music where I feel most like myself – time suspends, and there’s a sense of presence that allows anxieties and fears to move into the background for a bit. With Maeve & Quinn, my duo with my twin sister (violinist and poet Bryce O’Tierney), I’ve performed and toured a great deal, so that’s really nurtured something vital for me over the years. We’ve created performance programs that allow us to express a spectrum of ideas in different modes and dimensions: spoken word poetry; telling stories about where we grew up in Alaska and Ireland, as well as the pioneering women in our family; collaboration with dancers through improvisation and film; and composing symphony orchestra pieces. This work has brought me into community with a lot of different audiences – in theatres, museums, orchestra halls, smaller folk/pop venues, etc. – which enriches my perspectives and curiosity. That versatility is something I carry into my Park Hills Circle performances; whatever group of people I’m lucky enough to share my music with, I bring full presence and intention to find some common ground.

• What changed for you creatively when moving from collaborative duo work into the more singular identity of Park Hills Circle?

Maeve & Quinn will write, record, and tour again (collaboration as twin sisters and artists is core to our lifelong relationship!), though Park Hills Circle is more so my current focus. It’s exciting and enriching to have multiple creative channels/musical projects to express my ideas – so I’m experiencing this moment in my career not as a departure from one thing to the next, but more as an expansion and deepening of what I love. Some ideas – whether stylistically, or in terms of story and emotion – may fit better for Maeve & Quinn development or vice versa for Park Hills Circle; having that option means more flexibility, which I find artistically liberating and generative. 

Your music sits between indie, classical, and experimental spaces—do you ever feel pressure to “define” the project, or do you resist categorization entirely?

I don’t think about genre explicitly when writing or performing my music. While my musical sensibilities may lean in a few more defined directions, I like to write and lean into the style that best fits the emotional arc or mood of a given song. Especially for women, I think there can be a pull or bias in the music industry to label things as singer-songwriter confessional, which isn’t necessarily the case. Not all of my songs are about my direct emotional experience. As I know will resonate with other artists, there are different channels for writing about what we observe as social or political issues in our world; or transforming what we learn from friends or romantic partners into entirely new characters that occupy their own stories and become part of the world of a song or album.

Can you walk us through the emotional or narrative arc of All of a Sudden as a full album—what ties it together?

With All of a Sudden, especially the song lyrics and ordering of tracks, I wanted to capture the nonlinear way many of us process our experiences and understand our memories over time — how growth shows us what we most treasure and want to sustain, and learning how to celebrate that recognition. My writing for the album began when I was living on my own for the first time, after several wonderful creative years in Chicago making music with my twin sister. I felt the excitement of cultivating my own home space, as well as opening into a new channel musically through Park Hills Circle, reconnecting with my roots in classical fingerstyle guitar and soprano art songs. Through this time, I was also examining and needing to heal past experiences. I found myself grappling with a challenging period of depression, which showed me new sides of myself and with that, deeper ways to care for my spirit and those around me. The songs on this album catch me on what felt like an emergent arc – finding my way back to lightness but with a newfound sense of clarity in what fuels me, and what I want to bring to my creative work, my relationships, and my communities. 

What do you hope listeners feel in the quiet moments of your music, especially in contrast to the more lush, expansive arrangements?

This is a lovely and well timed question! I was recently home in Anchorage, Alaska, visiting my family, and was moved by the quality of quiet there. As I was hiking in the Chugach Mountains, overlooking Cook Inlet into the Pacific Ocean, the scale of the surroundings invited me to deeply exhale, and remember what that feels like.That’s the kind of feeling I hope the more intimate moments of my music can invite: a return to tenderness, slowing down, imagination, ways to soothe and fortify our spirits. And from those moments of shoring oneself up, I suppose the more expansive, layered moments of the music are for reaching out, trusting new connections, celebrating hard-won healing and growth – and as poet Mary Oliver captures so well… to feel that ‘joy is not made to be a crumb”!

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