Wallis Bird Has Something To Say About Love, And You'd Better Listen Up

The most important thing we learned about Wallis Bird isn't that she lost all of the fingers on one hand in a lawnmower as a baby, underwent surgery to reattach all but one and learned to play guitar flipped upside down (yes, really). It isn't that she has played over 600 shows in the past seven years - one of which went for a staggering 12 hours. It isn't that she is a two-time winner of Ireland's national music prize, or that she signed to Island Records and Columbia Records after moving to Germany when she was 23. It isn't that she has five records under her belt, or that her girlfriend makes her deliriously happy. It's that she is wise beyond her 34 years, loves deeply and completely, and has bared herself entirely on Home. And, she is funny as hell.

"To be honest with you, this record feels like a kind of completion for me... It feels like I've been working all this time to get to a certain point - and all of it has been milestones in my life - and a milestone to me is not success in life… I sound like such a positive… blerg!" she chortles. Adopting a New Age tone, she jokes "I'm standing on my head right now while doing yoga… no I'm not. This is not actually a phone call right now, I'm talking to you telepathically. I've reached the other plane," she warbles mysteriously.

"I would ask everybody to just drop their burdens of feeling like you should be allowed to dislike hope or dislike love or other people… There is nothing wrong with love."

During what we're assuming to be a short bout of insanity, Bird decided to confront writer's block and rid herself of her "lazy bone" while writing Home by playing a gig for a solid 12 hours. "It was sweaty, it was fierce, I was worried!" she giggles. "Put myself out there, make a tonne of mistakes, make a fool out of myself, make it so that nobody has to pay money to come and see me so that people can come in open minded and [be] truthful critics… I'm not precious. People's reaction to my work is absolutely subjective and it's good to be kept in check and told that you're terrible!" she reasons. She loved the experience so much that she reveals "I'm gonna try and break the world record which is 27 hours. Sure, why not!"

The title track of Home is captivating in its honesty, accentuated by Bird's voice; raw and untethered, a capella in the Irish Sean Nos style. "This story that I'm singing about is quite possibly the most personal and outrageously naked tale I've ever had to tell," she imparts. "So the story is of the night that I met my girlfriend Tracey. There was a house party…" the tale begins. She quotes her lyrics: "'You walked into the kitchen with a basket bearing chicken and a look of mischief pouring from your eyes'. I sung the whole song in the kitchen, in the exact spot where I laid eyes on her. And the accompaniment in the background is a recording from that night; we were all jamming and singing and having drinks beneath the stars and I opened up the recorder on my phone and I said 'anybody mind if I record?' An hour later, she's saying 'I'm so glad I met you, you're the favourite person I've met this year'. It's buried in the recording of the song." We pause to hear hearts breaking around the world.

As of 2015, the Children & Family Relationship Bill has essentially allowed both marriage and adoption for same-sex couples in Ireland. Bird's passion for equality is practically tumbling through the phone. "What happened in Ireland was that they felt a relief that they didn't have to feel some kind of hatred towards gay people. My mum was like 'My daughter is gay, and I absolutely believe that she's the person that I reared her to be, so why would I think that there was something wrong with her?' She felt an extreme burden dropped from the fact she could say 'What I felt in my heart was always right.'"

Without outrage or anger, Bird impassions the need for countries like Australia - who persist in blocking equal rights for the LGBTQI community - to learn acceptance. "I would say this. A country is defined by its people. And it's also very much defined locally. Me growing up, I was just exactly who I was and I encouraged people to be exactly who they were, and if somebody judged me it's their problem because their judgement of me was wrong. If they said that I was sick, or evil or tarnished in some way I was always saying 'That's not true'. So politics, though it defines the law of the land it, doesn't really define people. So I would ask everybody to just drop their burdens of feeling like you should be allowed to dislike hope or dislike love or other people… There is nothing wrong with love. Love is not a crime, love is a beautiful thing. Just be kind, there's no need for hate it's bad for you, it's poisonous, why bother? What better goal?"