Track-by-track with Pillow Queens debut album "In Waiting"
Image: Faolán Carey
Pillow Queens, made up of Sarah, Pamela, Rachel, and Cathy, are a queer rock band from Ireland. Formed in 2016, their music quickly gained the attention of BBC Radio 1 and across Ireland and they were soon performing sell out shows across the UK and Ireland as well as playing at some of the world’s biggest festivals, including Eurosonic and Iceland Airwaves, with a SXSW appearance cancelled after the coronavirus pandemic hit. Earlier this year, their single ‘Handsome Wife’ picked up a loyal following in Australia after getting support from Triple J amongst others.
Today the band release their debut album In Waiting. Full of intimate stories crafted from their lives, the band recorded the album in Donegal in the remote northwest of Ireland. With warm fuzzy beats and a soundscape that encompasses rock, indie and shoegaze, Pillow Queens make that special kind of music that invites you in and quickly becomes part of your life. To celebrate the release of In Waiting, Pillow Queens have done an exclusive track by track commentary on the album.
“We wanted to make an album with a grandiose sound that was big and robust. Our aim was to make our guitars and drums all encompassing and use our voices as a wall of sound. Some of our songs on the album provide respite from the huge sound we were aiming for, like ‘Harvey’, but still have a grand warmth. Others give a false sense of this but then break away into a loud cathartic energy.”
1. Holy Show
A song that tries to convey the feeling of angst foreboding and paranoia. In other words “the fear”. In Ireland, if you’ve embarrassed yourself, you’re said to have made a holy show of yourself. The majority of the sound of this song drifts away from the pure guitar sound of other tracks on the album to make it express the feeling of nightlife. This song really shaped itself in the studio as it was a song we had been picking away at for years and once we were able to easily experiment with different sounds. As it is the opening track, we wanted people to feel like they were entering the room with us and beginning the journey of the album. We tried to achieve this by the bass and vocals beginning and slowly adding the drums then guitars. Hopefully feels like we walk into the room and pick up our instruments.
2. Child of Prague
The practise of putting the child of Prague statue out in the hedge, or burying it in the garden, as a solicitation for good weather is, even in this age of unbelief, widespread. Some believe that, 'it'll not bring you right luck till the head falls off it,' but the decapitation must happen by accident. Lyrically, ‘Child of Prague’ was inspired by the big snow of 2018 which seemed to turn everything upside down and cause everyone to behave in weird ways. I loved the idea that somewhere someone had buried a Child of Prague in the wrong place, or torn its head off in desperation and now we were all dealing with the repercussions. Sonically this song came together quite easily. It was born and bred in our practice space in Dublin and has really obvious elements of each of us in it. The lyrical repetition of the middle eight matched with the tonal change tries to achieve a feeling of unrest followed by a big blow out and release of emotion.
3. Handsome Wife
‘Handsome Wife’ begins with a glimpse into an emotional homecoming, one that intensifies and romanticises the seemingly insignificant. Throughout, the mundane but tender moments are held up and deified, paying reverence to the ease in which a love can thrive outside the realms of tradition. It was really fun getting the guitar tones for this track, sneaking in a little bit of fuzz to quite a poppy song.
4. HowDoILook
Sarah - One of the oldest songs we have, this one really took shape in a live setting. We had been battling with this song for a while when Cathy and Rachel came up with the intro of pulsing drums introducing duelling guitars. I still have the original handwritten lyrics to this song. I wrote them in a sketchpad which I’d bought in an attempt to break my writer's block and it weirdly worked. Usually I type my lyrics though because my handwriting is awful. We had struggled with this song for quite some time. It just wasn’t clicking but we knew something was there. When we went to the practice space and just said “just don’t play what you usually play” things really fell into place.
5. Liffey
This is one of the darkest songs on the album and sonically we wanted that to be very prevalent. Lyrically it's very apocalyptic and full of impending doom to oneself and the world around them. We wanted the sound of this to punch you in the gut which meant everything needed to be huge white the lead guitar was still able to slice through powerfully. The production took a few goes to get the right but Tommy nailed it in the end. We had envisioned it being like a thunder storm of instruments and vocals, from the low pulsing drum and bass to the swelling cymbals and wailing guitars.
6. A Dog’s Life
Written from a place of frustration at the housing crisis in Ireland, ‘A Dog’s Life’ questions how we expect so much of ourselves and other people when it’s so difficult to even keep a roof over our heads. Sonically we wanted that frustration to come through. The drums are loud, the lead guitar was recorded in a huge empty room full of amps feeding back, the bass is driving, the vocals are exasperated. The vocals were re-recorded because when we went away and sat with the song we didn’t think the rawness came through enough.
7. Gay Girls
Thematically the song touches on feelings of intoxicating lust coupled with relentless repression. These themes are realised through the lyrics and the music which convey an upbeat appreciation of both the negative and positive attributes of both. The theme of religion within ‘Gay Girls’ is also accented nicely by a rapturous choral outro. Reverse guitars and hints of a Big Muff in the delicate verse gives a little preview of what’s to come in the outro.
8. Harvey
’Harvey’ pulls away from the crunching guitar sounds of the album to provide respite in a very traditional love song. The subtleties in Cathy's guitar create an all surrounding warmth throughout the track. We tried to emulate a lot of love song standards from the 1950s with the texture in our guitars and drums as well as our harmonies. We’ve even got an organ on that track. We had to work out the harmonies in the studio because they were so close but when we did it was very satisfying and they sounded wonderful.
9. Brothers
The lyrics show quick snapshots of the aftermath from a loss of a friend within a very tight knit group. An element of fear runs through the song as this sudden death makes you look around your group and terrified of the chances of another. Sonically the delicate verses erupt into emotion filled choruses with howling guitars for a cathartic release.
10. Donaghmede
’Donaghmede’ is a suburb on Dublin’s northside. The song begins with a very bare guitar and vocals, and as it moves gradually more hints of texture are added as it pushes to expand wider. The song is one that grasps at nostalgia in order to keep loved ones close together and safe from the hardness of the outside world. It suddenly jumps off the ledge of its subtleties of sound and into the choppy waters of exhilarating noise to provide a fitting end to the album. This track was one of the most fun to create. There is no shortage of guitar tracks as well as bizarre synth sounds. It feels like a recap of the album with a most definitive, if abrupt, end.
In Waiting from Pillow Queens is out now via AWAL. You download and stream here.
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