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Interview with Juliet Quick: ‘It felt empowering to frame the narrative how I wanted, to turn it into an artefact that was worth having’

Brooklyn, New York-based singer-songwriter Juliet Quick will bring out a new EP, Glass Years, on 5 March, offering her take on issues such as climate change, misogyny and self-interrogation.

Glass Years kicks off with ‘Circles’, which was released as a single at the end of January, and in which Quick’s acoustic guitar pulses around an arrangement that rises and falls around her. She navigates her way through unmarked days between her bedroom and the hazy world outside – something everyone can identify with on lockdown – struggling to cope with the feelings of aimlessness and depression weighing her down. ‘Don’t listen to the crust punks, they have no coherent politics,’ she tells herself, but wonders, ‘do you think you know yourself?’ in its final moments. 

‘I wrote ‘Circles’ about a year ago,’ she said. ‘It was about a combination of things, there were a couple of pieces floating around in my head and it clicked that they should go together. It was a pretty bad period in my life. I had just quit a really bad job and relationship. I was recovering and there was a lot of input from people around me but I was too burned out to take it all in. The song is about letting yourself exist.’

Quick’s songs are stark yet sweet, weary, frank, immediate and plainspoken. On Glass Years, she carves out a space of her own by combining spare acoustics, playful synths, frenetic strings, and weeping lap steel. However, she admits that she’s not always aware of the themes running through her songs when she’s writing them.

‘It’s a high energy song, even if it isn’t happy but it creates a tension that was important to me’

In the EP’s second track, ‘No Future’, she turns existential dread about global environmental collapse into sparkling dream pop. 

‘I was feeling a lot of stress about climate change and also thinking about ways in which my relationship had been informed by gender,’ she said. ‘Women are expected to take on the emotional burden from their male partner, even if it’s not conscious on either side. It’s a high energy song, even if it isn’t happy but it creates a tension that was important to me.’

Over shimmering synths, Quick surveys her usual comforts as they fail to perform in the face of fear: ‘One moon and a shelf full of idols, four bottles of various pills and a candle with the wick burned out.’

She points out that ‘No Future’ is not designed to be a measured political comment: ‘It’s a snapshot of a moment when the enormity of ecological crisis feels too overwhelming to conceive with sophistication – when despair temporarily blots out reason and political intention,’ she said. ‘I wrote this song in the worst depression of my life, when I was essentially trying to decide whether it was still worth trying to be alive. Putting that absolute torrent of despair into the shape of this little pop song made it liveable and, eventually, even a little bit funny.’

The fourth track on the EP, ‘The Tooth’, is more experimental and a nod to her earlier work as she uses traditional folk instrumentation to ruminate on a violation of consent. ‘The assault in question was a long time ago,’ she said, it was more of an unfolding experience than a trauma, it’s more about redefining the experience. There are a couple of other songs I’ve written about it but not released. It was cathartic to write. It felt empowering to frame the narrative how I wanted, to turn it into an artefact that was worth having.’

The song mirrors that process of realization: ‘Now I tread in the swell of his wake but I know he’ll drown when that wave breaks.’

‘I’m really happy with how it turned out, with the atmospheric layering’

Another track, ‘Lose Me’, is very much a song about processing a break-up, according to Quick. ‘It’s similar to ‘Circles’ in terms of the instrumentation,’ she said. ‘It’s pretty heavy on the violin. I’m really happy with how it turned out, with the atmospheric layering. My friend Nathan plays violin on it, we’ve been playing together for six years. It was a lot of fun.’

Quick is one of those rare people who has flourished during lockdown: ‘I love being alone and living alone,’ she said. I’d be going stir crazy if I had roommates! I’m good at occupying myself on my own.’

She has also composed some concept pieces, notably her three part ‘Changeling’ track from 2018: ‘I was a poetry major doing research on the Hudson River,’ she explained. ‘I was learning a lot about the ecological devastation and native biology. So I was doing that and there were snippets that didn’t really have a place in that project but I realized that they could be songs. The trilogy is kind of like an orchestral/folk song circle, it’s also about coming of ages and those feelings of alienation from what was comfortable and familiar.’

Quick is a big fan of New York singer and multi-instumenalist, Joanna Newsom: ‘She’s my fave, the ultimate genius,’ she said. ‘Her songwriting is on a different level, it’s so layered, she’s a brilliant lyricist. It’s so international and sophisticated. The harp is beautiful and her use of folk instruments is beautiful.’

She says that there are people she’s like to tour with from an aspirational standpoint, like American singer Adrienne Lenker, best known as the frontwoman and guitarist in indie rock band, Big Thief. ‘Most of all, though, I’d like to tour with my friends because if you’re going to be on the road every night, you want to be with people you really like. Some of my friends haven’t released any songs yet but they’re some of my favourite songwriters in the world.’

(Photo credit: Hannah Solomon)

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