The Fragile Fire of Youth: Sloan Treacy’s Poetic Reckoning in new EP “was any of it real?”

July 26, 2025

The Fragile Fire of Youth: Sloan Treacy’s Poetic Reckoning in new EP “was any of it real?”

At just 16, Sloan Treacy already makes waves ripple with a voice that is the bite of lived feeling and the glint of unbroken dreams. Her sophomore EP, "was any of it real?", is an epistolary diary in keys, stitched together across Los Angeles and Nashville recording rooms. The sole highlight "Pavement" was born of the entirety of one word, but grew into an epiphany—an anthem for the people pleasers who lose themselves in the journey to being enough for everyone else.

"If you pay too much attention to looking good in other people's opinion," Sloan warns, "you'll be diminishing yourself." It's a line that scans more like a mirror than a lyric. All the songs of the EP are such scribbled notes exchanged in school—intimate, raw, pulsating with truth. "The Good Part" is the fantasy we willingly consume when promises are made but never kept, and we stand, hearts at palm, waiting for a better page that may never arrive. Written in an instant of creativity before stepping into the recording studio, its spontaneity roars loud within the music, raw and imperative.

And then there's "Optimist," ironically titled, filled with sarcasm and sensitivity, rooted in a subtle acoustic introspection and grown into a vibrant, full-timbered production by producer Don Miggs and Grammy-nominated mixer Mark Needham. It's a track which showcases optimism bordering on blind obstinacy. But with "Mirage," a dance on the precipice of the real and the illusion, and "Fever," a lyrical maze of frustration at being enfolded in someone else's verbal acrobatics, these songs are what make Sloan stand out—not merely as a great teller of stories but as someone who painstakingly excavates truth from the depths of teenage experience. And in "The Edge," initially composed as a classroom assignment, she captures the suspended breath preceding a leap—the tension between hope and history, between courage to believe and ready for the fall.

Following the softly powerful debut EP Stuck, Sloan Treacy comes back not only older, but wiser. Her own music resounds with the authenticity of Gracie Abrams and Lizzy McAlpine's songwriters, yet she places her own unique seal on the genre—a union of lyrical integrity and melodic gloss. Between songwriting sessions, she's racing on the track, reading the pages of novels, or baking in her Tennessee kitchen. But live on stage is where she is most alive, ready to deliver her growing setlist to those who need it most. Catch her live at Anastasias in Antioch, IL, and be prepared to feel something real. Because when it comes to Sloan Treacy, the answer to was any of it real? is a resounding yes.