Sarah Julia

Sarah Julia at Songbyrd

Thursday April 8th

The title of folk pop duo Sarah Julia’s debut album, The Fear That This Is Real, refers to the gray area of indecision. A change is needed, undoubtedly, but you don’t yet dare cross the threshold. Standing on the precipice of the unknown, do you take a cautious step or leap forward?

Sarah and Julia, however anxiously, chose to jump. In the Fall of 2025, the sisters traveled from Amsterdam to Saugerties, New York, to record with Philip Weinrobe (Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker, Florist, Hand Habits). For six days, the sisters sat in a circle and recorded 12 songs with a group of near-strangers. The sisters had felt stuck in their heads during previous recording sessions, and Weinrobes’communal, headphones-off approach allowed them to channel deeper feelings from the gut. Sometimes, late at night, the group turned off all the lights and played in candlelight. It was different from anything the sisters had previously experienced. There was no time to mind any fear.

This was real.

Music was not the sisters’first artistic pursuit. Their mother had been shy as a child, so she enrolled her daughters in theater classes. Though Julia, the younger one, says she still turned out fairly shy, both sisters took to acting and performed in a variety of musicals, TV shows, and movies in their native Netherlands. “It took us quite a long time to figure out that we should make music together,” says Sarah. “We were used to having a script—” “Telling other people’s stories,” agrees Julia, finishing her sister’s sentence, as they both frequently do. “So it took us a while to find what we wanted to write about. That really changed when we both picked up the guitar.”

Julia, especially, clicked with the guitar—Sarah is drawn to the “tiny instruments” like the mandolin. They shared a love of folk music, having internalized the Cat Stevens and Jim Croce played by their parents during their childhoods. Sarah Julia’s debut EP, 2024’s How Do We Go Back To Being Normal?