Marjana Semkina’s second solo album, Sirin, is full of songs of ornate beauty that belie their bleak subject matter. The Russian singer has always had a predilection for the darkest of fairy tales, but, crucially in this real-life story, the world has become a perilous, nightmarish place since she released her solo debut, Sleepwalking, in February 2020.
Semkina left St Petersburg in the middle of lockdown that year to take up residence on the Sussex coast, having attained a Tier 1 “exceptional talent” visa. Then, as was the case for millions of others, her world was turned upside down when the country she grew up in invaded Ukraine in February 2022. As Pericles once said: “Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.”
“For me, music was always a means of escaping reality,” she says from her current home on England’s south coast, “because I didn’t particularly like reality. I always thought that when art becomes political, it defeats the purpose. Except at some point, there is a line where you can’t really avoid it any longer,
