Heavy Heart are a five-piece, female-fronted alt/dream rock band from London, formed in 2014. Throughout 2016, they wrote, recorded and released a new song each month, culminating in their first full-length release which will be available spring 2017.
In this interview spotlight, we chat about influences, the new project, this digitized music world and more.
Full Q&A along with links and streams below. At the bottom of this article you can find all 12 songs from Heavy Heart’s month-to-month release schedule!
Where are you from and what style of music do you create? (In your own words, not necessarily in marketing terms or by popular genre classifications.)
We’re from a suburb of south east London called New Cross. When you step off the train, the first thing you see is a big, grey, dirty main road and these words in red neon: “Take Courage” (it’s actually the name of a brewery on top of a local pub, but it always resonated with me). It’s not somewhere you’d visit unless you lived there really, but just below the surface there’s this great community and a diverse and real musical history. James and I grew up there and that’s where we formed the band, so I guess that’s where its heart is still. We started out wanting to pay tribute to bands we loved when we first got into music as kids – those songs which attached themselves to all the big (and small) moments in our lives, those guitars which cut through everything else, that real emotion and that wordless energy. So I guess bands like R.E.M., Pixies, The Beatles, Nirvana, Jeff Buckley, Smashing Pumpkins, Radiohead were starting points in terms of inspiration. But once you have five people involved, creating together, you start to make music which sounds like you.
What led you down this path of music and what motivates you to stay the course?
We all started playing music as kids, and I think it just becomes a habit; something you do without thinking. When I was really young I loved The Beatles, and I felt like I wanted to be them, but I didn’t really start thinking about writing my own songs until I learned to play the guitar. Sitting in music class at school one day when I was 13 or 14, a girl passed me a note with the chords to a song on it, and how to play them, and suddenly I had this instrument I could sing along to, that I could play without having to learn scales or theory or notation (although that stuff has ended up being really useful too). Suddenly, the whole world of music opened up to me in a new way and it was no longer just a passive experience. I still get a buzz out of that and I love the mystery of it all too. Yes, you can develop techniques, but you never truly understand how a song comes into being – there’s always that ten percent that’s just pure magic. I think that’s what makes me keep doing it.
How is your new release different than previous ones? Did you set out to accomplish anything specific?
Throughout 2016, we wrote, recorded and released a new song each month, which was a huge challenge – ‘Keepsake’ was the final song of the set and a more low-key moment for us, a reflection on an interesting, eventful and sometimes troubling year. We set out originally to push ourselves as songwriters and to expand our repertoire, but I think we achieved much more than that in the process. Patrick produces all our music, and pulling a fully-formed song out of the ether every four weeks was something I wasn’t always sure we’d be able to do, but we managed it and we have certainly found a new sense of discipline as a result. Writing ‘in the moment’ was also a new approach for me, and meant that lyrically I was always responding to events – both in my own life and outside – as they happened, and people were hearing this stuff just days after it was created. Musically too it meant that we were always trying to do better than last month’s song, trying to focus our sound and improve every time. It was a gruelling and turbulent process at times, but sitting here a year later I feel proud of what we achieved and excited to write more.
Do you face any challenges as an indie musician in a digital age? On the flip side, how has technology helped you (if it has)?
I think the challenges facing a band in the digital age are the same as they’ve always been, except that now you’re more aware of the sheer amount of music out there globally, instead of just on your own local scene, and perhaps you’re more aware of how hard it is to get heard. Technology has definitely helped us tough – we release all our music on Bandcamp and Soundcloud and I can see firsthand where people are listening. It blows my mind to think that this little song we wrote in our flat in south east London is being played by people in Nashville, or Tokyo, or Brisbane. Actually, I can’t even imagine how people got their music out to the world in the pre-digital age. It must have been a lot harder.
Where can we follow you online and hear more music?
Everything we release goes up on Soundcloud and Bandcamp and you can see what we’re up to on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. We love hearing from people so feel free to drop us a message.
Anything else before we sign off?
We’ll be announcing a very special release soon – details are still being confirmed, but suffice to say that vinyl junkies might like this one!
