Park Hills Circle, the genre-expansive project of Alaskan-Irish artist Maris O’Tierney, currently based in Chicago, releases her new single “Clearing”, ahead of her debut album All of a Sudden, out July 10 via Pravda Records.
“Clearing” moves through the tension between closeness and autonomy, shaped by O’Tierney’s lived experience as an identical twin and her tendency toward deep emotional entanglement in relationships. The song reflects a desire for independence without severing intimacy, and the ongoing process of learning how to hold both.
Built on fingerstyle guitar, layered vocal harmonies, and subtle jazz-leaning textures, the track opens into a spacious instrumental outro featuring saxophonist Dustin Laurenzi, whose lines extend and echo the vocal melody, shifting the track into something more expansive and unresolved.
The album All of a Sudden traces cycles of transition, grief, and reconfiguration — both personal and musical. It follows a period of change for O’Tierney after years performing in the duo Maeve & Quinn with her twin sister Bryce, and into a more solitary writing practice grounded in classical guitar, voice, and experimental arrangement.
Recorded at Chicago’s Bim Bom Studios with engineer Michael MacDonald, the record brings together collaborators including Aaron Otheim (synths/piano), Dustin Laurenzi (saxophone), Quin Kirchner (percussion), and Matt Ulery (bass), forming a fluid, genre-blurring sound world that moves between folk, atmospheric pop, and jazz-influenced composition.
Across All of a Sudden, songs resist neat resolution, instead holding emotional contradiction in motion. “Clearing” sits within that approach as a study in space, tension, and release.
