Q&A: Lots of Hands confronts coming of age in their new album, ‘Into A Pretty Room’
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY SKYE SCHOENHOEFT ☆
GROWING UP IS A SENTENCE WE ALL FACE—and Lots of Hands answered the call of coming of age with their new album, in a pretty room. Following their first album, fantasy, their latest release is a careful maturation of their sound and a warm welcome to a new era. Ageing doesn’t mean an end to life’s playfulness, and bandmates/long-time friends Billy Woodhouse and Elliot Dryden write with care and speak with levity.
Entering a dreamy soundscape that mixes acoustic and electronic elements, the listener finds themselves in a folksy memory that rings of innocence. Threading notes of rock, bluegrass, and indie grunge, this album weaves a swath of tones to build its unique world. Tenderly boyish and lovingly bashful, Lots of Hands accepts the relentlessness of time and reframes it as an ode to friendship.
Lots of Hands calls me from a couch in Newcastle, staving off the January cold with hot cocoa and marshmallows. The two speak in a synchronized step, both in time with the other’s thoughts.
LUNA: Do you guys have any new year's resolutions?
WOODHOUSE: Mine is to learn how to play the banjo properly.
DRYDEN: Mine was to be able to grow a beard. It’s the same as last year’s.
LUNA: Is there anything you can do other than sheer willpower?
WOODHOUSE: You can get beard rollers.
DRYDEN: Nah.
WOODHOUSE: Fancy the old beard roller?
DRYDEN: Nah you just gotta let it happen.
LUNA: So how long have you guys known each other?
LOTS OF HANDS: Five years now.
LUNA: Do you think your music has changed as you two have grown together?
WOODHOUSE: 100%. I think that’s what the album we’ve just made is all about in its entirety, just about growing old.
DRYDEN: (laughs) growing to the age of 21.
WOODHOUSE: The old-ass age of 22.
LUNA: On the way out already.
WOODHOUSE: It’s over.
LUNA: Do you guys have any emotional themes to the album? Where did your inspiration come from?
DRYDEN: Yeah it was just that. Progression.
WOODHOUSE: Moving forward from a time that you don't really look back on with great feelings, but using it as a way to grow as a person. The actual process of making the record spoke for itself… we were spending a lot of time together and when you’re two guys from Newcastle you kind of have to force yourself to write music and not just play Fortnite and get really drunk. So it was kind of learning to be more open with songwriting and collaborating. So that’s what I would say the themes are. Friendship. The power of friendship.
LUNA: How do you think you grew as an artist while creating this? Did this album push you in any ways you weren't expecting?
WOODHOUSE: I was a lot more vulnerable making this record, as in I was thinking about the lyrics more. We were bringing in a lot of songs that we had written from a long time ago—which is not something I’d done a lot—which recontextualizes them. It was the first time we thought about how the context of the songs fit together, the imagery, and what we were singing about. We were kind of learning how to make a record.
DRYDEN: Learning how to music.
WOODHOUSE: I don’t know if I actually knew how to do that before this record.
LUNA: I read that you produced this all yourself, right?
WOODHOUSE: Yeah, there was a lot of learning when it came to that because I wasn’t fully familiar with Logic when I started it. You get to a really awkward point where you make one song and you feel kind of familiar with the DAW, and then you make another one and you’re like “sh*t I made this last song wrong.” And you go back and try and reproduce it and then you get into this endless spiral of “dammit I’m really actually not that good at producing.” We didn’t spend that long producing it to be fair, a couple months of going back and forth with these songs. There was only so much I could do to be honest.
LUNA: Do you feel like producing the album yourself gave you a different type of ear? Now that you’ve broken down how the song was created?
WOODHOUSE: Yeah definitely, especially since it's the first album we’ve ever had mastered. And I think that’s always why I’ve been so insecure as a producer because I’ve never taken it to that extra step where you’ve got someone that cleans it up and makes it sound clear and loud. It recontextualized the actual making of an album. That’s why we’re ready to do more.
LUNA: Do you guys both have a favorite song off of the album?
WOODHOUSE: I like “barnyard.” That song’s amazing.
DRYDEN: My favorite is “in b tween.” That’s Bill's one. I like that one.
WOODHOUSE: That's just me.
DRYDEN: Just Bill.
LUNA: I was going to say that “barnyard” was my favorite off the album too, I really liked that one.
WOODHOUSE: That one was the most fun we’ve had making a song. It was just like—
DRYDEN: Took like 10 minutes.
WOODHOUSE:—bros being bros.
LUNA: How do you guys come up with your sound effects? You have a unique sound going on; how do you play around and create that scape?
WOODHOUSE: When I started the project it was just like, I saw Garage Band as like, how many weird sounds can I make. I did a lot of ambient music and I’ve got an ambient record out there where I just play with delays and granulizers. Elliot will come up with a song and I’ll ask “can I add this?” And he’ll say if it’s too f*cked up or not. He’ll say if I’m allowed to add it. So I think we met in the middle for this. And we have a couple little weird sounds. Sometimes I just write something and I’m just like it needs a little thing. It needs some Bill seasoning with a funny little sound.
LUNA: On that too, I’m curious too if you’re seeking to evoke any kinds of emotions with specific sounds? You have these twinkling noises and higher pitched frequencies throughout. What compels you to add those?
WOODHOUSE: I think with the high pitched vocals, it just feels really nostalgic. Dead Sullivan and Teethe do that a lot, it almost creates like a narrative and a different character, especially when you think about “barnyard,” with Elliot’s really low vocals at the start. It puts someone else’s voice there so that I can speak from someone else’s perspective. I just think it sounds cool as well if I’m being honest.
LUNA: I also saw written somewhere that you guys have western influence in your music. How do you think that played into this album? What are some of the images you are trying to evoke?
WOODHOUSE: I think when Elliot wrote “barnyard,” that was like, hell yeah, we’re living on a farm.
DRYDEN: It was just more of the acoustic-y stuff that I wrote, because I lost the actual amplifier for my guitar so I could only play my acoustic. But I was also listening to country and bluegrass stuff at the time, so I wasn't really thinking [specifically] about writing stuff like that; it was pretty much all I was listening to at that point. For the actual album, some of the songs with those influences feel, I don’t know the word, nature-y. You know what I mean. The outdoors.
WOODHOUSE: You’re on a farm.
DRYDEN: You’re on a farm. Yeah I guess.
WOODHOUSE: Smokin’ a big doobie.
DRYDEN: Yeah.
LUNA: Do you feel like that kind of pastoral vibe fits in with the nostalgia of your music?
WOODHOUSE: I think it kind of just fits in. I was kind of just doing a lot of looking back and reminiscing, especially after making fantasy, which was about grieving and finding yourself in a situation you didn’t want to be in. And then [into a pretty room] was more like, settling down, looking back, just being able to feel nostalgic about good little times. Having brews with your bestie.
DRYDEN: Agree.
LUNA: Could you expand on how you feel this album was different from your previous work, beyond it actually being mastered? How has the album grown?
WOODHOUSE: This feels like the first album that I've made considering it as an album. Before, it was just like songs I had accumulated. I wasn't really in the headspace to put a running theme through them that wasn't just how I was feeling at the time. This time, it felt like we were just thinking about things more.
DRYDEN: It’s different because for the last album I only wrote one of the songs. And for this one, we [decided] “let's write five or six songs each and then we can both work on them together.” A few of the songs, we’d half written, and then we’d meet up and work on it. It's different in that we actually worked together.
WOODHOUSE: Structured.
DRYDEN: We wanted to actually write songs and put them on an album instead of just doing it and then thinking oh you’ve got all these songs you need to release them. We actually thought about it this time.
LUNA: What do you think changed? Did you just get older and want to do it?
WOODHOUSE: We definitely got a bit less silly. Elliot got his first job.
LUNA: Oh that’s cool.
(Dryden shakes his head)
WOODHOUSE: I moved out. I think it was part of getting older and being a lot less silly.
DRYDEN: But it was also just fun to do it as well. It started off that we would both write a demo of the song or write part of a song and then we’d send it to each other. Bill was living in Leeds at that time, which is like two hours away from Newcastle, so it [became] another reason to go down to hang out instead of just going to a bar or watching TV. But once we started doing it properly, it was quite fun to do. And it gave us something else to do rather than just PlayStation.
LUNA: I wanted to ask specifically about “helen’s song,” because I think that is such a nice way to end the album. What was your inspiration and why did you choose to end it on this note?
WOODHOUSE: I wrote that before fantasy so I’ve been sitting on it for quite a while. I got together with my flute player and recorded it. I wrote it for my grandma after she lost her son; she’s one of those people that just has loads of records but they’re all just piano-ey, like Bach and sh*t. So she just listens to that and I said I would write her something. And then, I thought because it was written before the album it was a nice touch to have it as this final point of looking back. From now on we can set ourselves a reminder to just write stuff and keep going. I think into a pretty room felt like looking back because we were grabbing a lot of old songs. It felt like an emotional reminder to just keep going. And it just goes on.
LUNA: Life just keeps going.
WOODHOUSE: It just keeps goddamn going.
LUNA: What do you think you’re most excited for with the album’s release?
WOODHOUSE: I’m excited to play these shows. We've got three shows at the end of January that we’re doing across the UK and then we’re playing a little tour with Crywank and we’re going to play all the songs off this album. Show it to all the little indie heads that like Crywank. I’m excited to just meet new people. When I was living in Leeds it was just like the most amount of creative people I’ve ever met and it was mostly just from playing and going to shows. So yeah, I’m excited to meet creative people and play music with people.
DRYDEN: I’m just excited for it to finally be out. Cause it’s pretty much been finished for a year, and we have meetings with the label and we’re always talking about when it comes out and stuff. So just for it to finally be out so we can stop talking about that it’s going to be good.
WOODHOUSE: We hate talking.
DRYDEN: We hate talking.
LUNA: You have a couple of shows coming up, but is there anything else you guys are looking forward to this year?
WOODHOUSE: Making music with my bestie.
DRYDEN: Yeah we’re going to start writing some new stuff soon.
WOODHOUSE: Drinking pints, having a laugh, watching Newcastle win the league.
DRYDEN: We’ve had a meeting about having some plans to come over to the US which I’m really excited about because I’ve never been…that’s exciting.
WOODHOUSE: We’re just excited to rock out and have fun.
LUNA: Do you guys have anything else you want to share about the album? How does it feel to be done?
WOODHOUSE: It feels amazing. And I’m excited to just tell the world about everyone who was involved. I’m happy to shout out Amy Plummer who did the flute and saxophone on the album, and the new live band we’ve got is amazing. So if everyone can just hear us out, just wait for us to smash this year, it’s going to be an awesome one.
