Q&A: Quiet Houses Emphasizes Romance Can Be Found Anywhere
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY IVONA HOMICIANU ☆
Photo by Meg Henderson
QUIET HOUSES WANTS YOU TO ROMANTICIZE YOUR LIFE. With their latest release titled “mark/james,” Quiet Houses continues on the path of the dreamy universe they’ve created. The indie pop summer anthem feels taken out of a romcom you’ve watched on a late summer evening as the sun sets, covering the world in an ethereal glow. Inspired by the concept of a house party in London, the single takes on a greater dimension with the joy it infuses. This era of releases from Quiet Houses is all about inspiring you to find romance in simplicity.
Edinburgh-born duo Hannah Elliott and Jamie Stewart aren’t only musical prodigies. With each person in the couple having a background in music, the result is a uniquely soft and hopeful kind of sound. Along with their one-of-a-kind atmosphere comes honeyed songwriting. Their previous single “Buttercup” details a sweet encounter, taking us by the hand and bringing us into the romantic sphere. Following their recent project Carried Away, Quiet Houses has shown their powerful dynamic gives them the advantage of versatility.
To say “mark/james” is an addictive track would be an understatement. Stewart’s guitar string pattern is the main element setting the tone of the production, but it is far from being the only one. With detailed additions such as intergalactic and video game sound effects, getting immersed in the vibe they created is easy. The production pairs perfectly with Elliott’s smooth vocals, which transmit light-hearted feelings of cautiously falling for someone. Her voice has an innate disposition for storytelling. Starting the song with a sigh and a tone that makes us want to hear more, the rise from blasé to enlivened is gradual, with the sudden ending of whispers making it feel like Quiet Houses is letting us in on a secret.
Read below to find out more about Quiet Houses and their universe.
Photo by Meg Henderson
LUNA: How did you form your band?
HANNAH: We've known each other our whole lives, pretty much. We grew up in Edinburgh in Scotland, and we both have always done music. I've done music my whole life. My parents are musicians. Jamie started a little bit later, but we both did lots of music at school, and then both went to study music at university, but at separate institutions. I went to the University of Manchester, Jamie went to conservatoire to study guitar, and it was a very gradual process. We never sort of decided, Let's start a band. We were sort of writing and then showing each other songs, and then eventually we were like, we should maybe be a band. But we were reluctant, because we're a couple. So we were thinking, yeah, it's a bad idea.
LUNA: Congratulations on your single “mark/james”! Could you explain the title?
JAMIE: I guess it's like, if you save someone's name in your phone and you don't know what the name is, and it's probably Mark or James, very common male names. When we were writing the song, we originally had that in the final chorus where it was like “You don't know my name, was it Mark or James?”
HANNAH: Yeah, we flipped it so it was, “I don't know your name, was it Mark or James?”
JAMIE: But then it was all a bit convoluted, and we felt it was a bit cringe. So we were like, I think it's better if we don't do that and then we just have that as the title.
LUNA: Yeah, I love that, because you do speak in the song about not catching the other person's name. So I thought it was a very catchy title, because it refers directly to the lyrics.
HANNAH: Yeah, it's fun when people are like, What is what? What do you mean your song is called Mark slash James?
LUNA: It has a very specific sound with a lot of details in the production. How do you get inspiration for your music production?
HANNAH: All sorts of ways. I love whenever Jamie plays a guitar, he naturally plays quite noodly intricate guitar parts. I like a lot of Midwest emo music, so whenever he plays that sort of stuff, I get really excited. I can't play it nearly as well, or at all, really. And then we tend to gravitate towards more of a dreamy production. I love the band Alvvays and shoegazey stuff, so I'm always wanting to find that sort of escapey sound in the production. And they're sort of the two main parts of our sound that we tend to stick to, like Jamie's guitar, which is quite a specific sound, and then the sort of tricky world.
LUNA: Yeah, the visuals are very soft and colorful. I think they are very fitting with the themes of a house party in “mark/james.” How do you decide how each era is going to look? Because I saw that you give very different vibes to each project.
HANNAH: Thank you. Well, I'd say I love doing the visuals almost as much as I love doing the music. It's like when we have the song not even fully written, I'm already thinking about what it's going to look like and how we're going to do the single art and stuff. So yeah, for this set of releases, I thought it would be quite cool to have the title of the song in kind of a DIY way, and so for the last single “Buttercup,” we had the title embroidered on the underwear, which I thought was quite fun. Then for this one, we did the stickers, and may or may not be doing it for stuff going forward, but I think that's fun because it still feels quite nostalgic, even though it's quite evocative. And as you say, more sort of a party and the last single was definitely a bit more out there, but I still think it feels quite nostalgic and Quiet Houses-y. You can tell where we've come from, and it's still got the light, wholesome vibe, but in a bit more updated, slightly older kind of way. We're really lucky. We work with one of our close friends, Meg, who's an amazing photographer, and she gets just as excited as me about all of it. So we're always sharing Pinterest boards and stuff. But yeah, I just love color. I could talk about it for ages, but that's probably more than enough information for you [laughs].
Photo by Meg Henderson
LUNA: I noticed nature is a big part of your visuals. It made me think, if each of you could describe the other as an element of nature, like rivers or woods, which element would it be?
HANNAH: I love that question. I think Jamie would be the woods, because he likes to be on his own and create and have nobody around, and can sometimes be a bit intense. That’s what you’d be.
JAMIE: What would you be? I'm maybe finding this a bit more difficult. I think Hannah would be maybe, the sun?
HANNAH: Oh, thanks, Jamie.
JAMIE: But on a day where it's like, just a bit too much, like, it's a bit too hot, a bit too much positivity.
LUNA: It works for some people!
HANNAH: Maybe not for you [laughs].
JAMIE: Yeah, you're the sun. There we go.
HANNAH: Thanks Jamie.
LUNA: “mark/james” has very much the vibe of a romcom. If you could have the song on the soundtrack of any romcom, which one would it be?
HANNAH: Oh my gosh, that's so hard.
JAMIE: How do you feel about the new Lena Dunham? What's it called? We're divided on it.
HANNAH: I think it definitely fits into that series. It’s called “Too Much.”
LUNA: I haven't seen it!
HANNAH: Or maybe something like a teen series, like “The Summer I Turned Pretty.”
LUNA: Yeah, I could definitely see it on that one.
HANNAH: So you know, if you want to set us up with a contact, that would be great [laughs].
LUNA: Your previous single “Buttercup” is very sweet. How was the creation process for that one?
JAMIE: It was good. They've all kind of been written in a batch, all the things that we’re releasing at the moment. We just moved to London, and we were pretty busy with work and stuff, so it was just random bits of time in the flat. I'd be trying to go to sleep, and Hannah would be like, I've got this melody! Or vice versa.
HANNAH: When people have been asking us about how we've been writing these songs, honestly, it is a little bit of a blur, because we didn't. It wasn't like a set time where we had time to write it. It was honestly pockets of ten minutes here and there, anytime, because we were so busy and working other jobs so much. It is a bit of a blur, but I just remember our flat being really hot, and Jamie always had his top off because it was too hot to work, and then I was just dancing around. Jamie would do sort of production ideas, and then I would normally do a top line, and then we'd finish off together. That was sort of the process for most things.
LUNA: It definitely sounds very sweet and joyful. Your music feels very hopeful. There's a lot of hope in all of them, but “Facts and Figures” is sadder than the rest. Do you find it easier to write from a place of hope? Or do you just have to transform it? For example, when you're upset and you think about writing a song, are you like, “Yeah, but maybe we should look at the brighter side of it”?
HANNAH: I don't want to speak for Jamie, because I think we naturally approach writing in quite a different way. I think definitely for me, I always want people to go away feeling from our music, whether that's live or listening to our songs and on Spotify, to feel more romantic about the world, or comforted. To feel like real life is a bit of a movie. Even “Facts and Figures,” yeah, I wrote it when I was pretty sad to be honest. I was living in Edinburgh, and I was feeling really stuck. I guess it's maybe bittersweet. Even our saddest ones, I want them to still feel bittersweet and have that hope that you were talking about, it is very important to me.
Photo by Meg Henderson
JAMIE: Yeah, I think it's just natural. Maybe we're just naturally sweet and hopeful people. It doesn't feel like that all the time. I guess when we're writing music, we're doing what we want to be doing all the time. So we naturally maybe feel a bit more sunny and hopeful about the world.
LUNA: That was very refreshing to hear, because I feel a lot of artists, when they have these negative emotions, they dwell in them, and it's all you hear in their music, which is fine, it's cathartic. Sometimes, you want to hear some hopeful “We're gonna get through this” kind of music.
JAMIE: It's also like, you're gonna have to gig the songs as well.
HANNAH: That's what I want the whole project to feel, with everything, the whole world, the visuals are hopeful and comforting and slightly other-worldly.
LUNA: Yeah, when you said that you wanted to make the world feel more romantic, I definitely felt that. I've been listening to your music on the train, and it really feels like I'm in a movie, and this is the soundtrack – it's great.
HANNAH: Thank you. That's so nice!
LUNA: I'm very intrigued about “Facts and Figures,” how did you write that one specifically?
HANNAH: I remember we started on piano. We were living at home, it was just after COVID when the world had opened up, and I had lots of voice notes on my phone of melodies. When I was cycling home from my job at three in the morning, I was working in Brew Dog, don't know if you know it. Don't go. It's a very cringe, middle-aged man craft beer place. There's this thing called the Edinburgh Fringe, where basically all the bars and everywhere in Edinburgh stays open really late, so I would finish working at three in the morning, and I would be cycling home, and I had lots of little voice notes of melodies and stuff, and just some lyric ideas, I think, but it was very fragmented. And then my favorite instrument in the world is my childhood piano, and I remember just sitting down and playing… At the beginning, there are sort of held notes. It started off sort of more pulsing on the piano. I think the melody was first, we didn't have any lyrics, kind of gibberish, and then we sort of slotted in the little fragmented ideas. Then we produced it a little bit, but not very much. We finished it in the studio that we work in in London with our producer, and I played some violin on it.
JAMIE: I remember you had that line, “When all your world is a crush,” and I heard that, I was like, Oh, that's good.
HANNAH: I think that's one of my favorite lyrics that we've ever done.
JAMIE: Sums up all the whole project, I think.
HANNAH: “When all your world is like a crush, you only know it just enough.” Yeah, that one I really love.
JAMIE: Not us quoting ourselves [laughs].
HANNAH: [Laughs] Yeah, no, I will say I'm proud of that one.
LUNA: You've described “Carried Away” as a platonic love song. Are friendships as important to you as romantic relationships?
QUIET HOUSES: Yeah, yeah I think so.
LUNA: I don't hear a lot of platonic love songs, so that was very intriguing to me.
HANNAH: Oh, thanks. Yeah, that's a really special one. It's about our friend Bonnie, who's also a musician and an amazing artist. Jamie, will you maybe speak more about it?
JAMIE: Yeah, it was about being on tour with her. I played guitar for her. She just has lots of confidence and self belief, and I just find it inspiring. It makes you feel like you can do whatever you want. You can do anything.
HANNAH: Just coming back to your question, I think most of our songs, and definitely all the songs we're writing at the moment are about love in some way or another. We sort of always just do that and yeah, we love love [laughs].
JAMIE: The project that we're putting out at the moment - I think there's love in every single chorus. Apart from “mark/james;” that’s a different kind of love.
HANNAH: Every other song pretty much has love in the title. I think friendship love songs are, I mean, one of my favorite songs ever is “Bros” by Wolf Alice, which is a platonic love song. Yeah, I really love that one.
Photo by Meg Henderson
LUNA: In “Call You Later,” there's a lyric that says, “I'm just trying to get to heaven.” First of all, that lyric is beautiful. I love the way it's produced too, I think it fits very well. It also makes me wonder, is that an aspiration for your musical evolution too? Because I feel like, from Carried Away to these two singles that you put out, it really feels heavenly. It’s definitely a more joyful time. I thought it was interesting that you ended the project with that song specifically, and then went on to release some of the songs that, to me, sound heavenly.
HANNAH: That’s interesting, I never thought about that. It makes us sound maybe more intentional than we actually are. But yeah, I think in some ways, we're both I'd say maybe the happiest we've ever been. I love living in London. In some ways, I do feel like we sort of have slightly got to heaven, we still have a long way to go. Jamie doesn't feel like that [laughs]. I mean, your music's always going to be a product of where you are, even though we don't always write strictly about our real lives and our real feelings but also from other places. I think you can't really help your music sounding like where you are in your life?
JAMIE: Maybe part of it is, it's an escape for us, doing the music. So we kind of feel like that for people listening to it as well.
LUNA: That's really nice to hear. Since you talked about being in London, I also saw that you talked about how much Edinburgh influenced your music. I was wondering, how does Scotland, in general, appear in your music?
HANNAH: I feel so lucky to have grown up in Edinburgh. It's that environment and being somewhere so beautiful and safe. I think what's given me my romantic outlook on the world is because Edinburgh is just like a movie, so I feel super lucky for that, and also because our music is so dreamy and escapey. We're so lucky that we live so close to the highlands of Scotland, and we could shoot all of our visuals up there, and I think that backdrop fits with our music and the expansiveness of it really well. I wouldn't say that the music itself is very Scottish, but the visuals feel like they belong in our world in some ways.
JAMIE: We're not so much like a Scottish band in the sense that quite a lot of people trade off of that. We're just from there, and then that affects us, because it's affected who we are as people. We’re not wearing kilts on stage [laughs].
LUNA: It's still a beautiful way to look at it, the fact that you know that growing up in this beautiful place made you want to make people feel like they too are living in a beautiful world. I think that's very poetic, and just gorgeous.
HANNAH: Oh, thank you.
LUNA: Are these two singles the beginning of a new project?
JAMIE: Yeah, yeah. So the project is, I think, going to come out in March next year. We have a lot of music. How much comes out in March is kind of TBD, we're figuring a few things out, but it'll definitely at least be a six track EP, and it might be more.
LUNA: What are you most excited about, in this new era?
JAMIE: We're excited to play the shows live. We did a gig when we launched all of this in Belladrum, up in Inverness, and we played just as a duo. It was all live, and it felt really good playing the two of us, actually. We're excited to gig that, and then also do it with a band as well.
HANNAH: We've sort of been in the recording writing hole for a long time, so we haven't been gigging very much. I'm really excited to see how people respond to the new music. It feels like Christmas sometimes when you're a musician, because I love releasing stuff. We've been waiting, this music we’ve written has been around for so long. It can be a long process, and you have to be very patient waiting for it to come out, so when it finally does, it's a nice feeling. So I just can't wait for it all to be out.
JAMIE: Then it feels real when you play it live.
