The titles of Still House Plants’ last two albums point inward: 2018’s debut Long Play referenced the record format itself, while 2020’s Fast Edit pointed to the chopped-up, collage-like process by which it was made. They speak to the band’s inner workings, the sparks that fly when the three musicians play together. Jess Hickey Callenbach’s voice, Finlay Clarke’s guitar and David Kennedy’s drums probe and provoke each other, sometimes colliding, sometimes ferociously intertwining grooves.
But their new album is called “if i don't make it, i love u.” It's an emotional, melodramatic, outward-looking statement that contrasts with the introversion of their previous work. Whereas for the previous two albums the band adopted monochrome artwork, this time the cover is an explosion of black and burnt orange. There's also an abstract “3” (this is the trio's third album) in the shape of a heart. The title's informal writing is deliberate, designed to evoke a text message someone might actually send, says Hickey Kallenbach, as tQ speaks to the band over Zoom. “What I love about the title is that it's so versatile. It can be a huge, scary statement or a message to your friends if you can't make it to the pub later. It's a simple statement, but it's so expansive. It's soothing, it's generous, it's a word. It's something you can express.”
“It feels like an evolution in some ways,” Kennedy says. Tonally, the band's sound hasn't changed all that much: the drums are still exploratory, the guitars are still resonant and raw, and Hickey Kallenbach's voice is still shape-shifting yet soulful. And yet, the album feels like a big step forward. “It's a simple change, but it feels like a pretty radical change,” Kennedy says. “It sounds warmer, more rounded to me.”
Where exactly this warmth comes from is hard to pin down, given both the band's continued use of the same humble instruments and their willingness to let things evolve intuitively when writing songs. “I just try to let things come out as naturally as possible, the way they should,” Clark says of his approach to guitar. “I'm kind of hazy. I don't finish a song and say, 'This is the album,'” says Hickey Kallenbach, when I ask how they know when they're “done.” The album cover is colorful, yet still fuzzy around the edges. It can sometimes feel hazy, even for Still House Plants. They often speak of the music they make as a separate entity that emerges between them while they play, and should be understood as observers rather than creators of it. That said, Hickey Kallenbach notes a newfound sense of vulnerability in the lyrics. “I think before, we allowed ourselves to hide more. We're still not completely transparent, but I think this time we were able to share something very honest, real and vulnerable.” Though they're careful about the details, it's not hard to detect signs of self-consciousness and fragmented inner monologue in their performances: “I wish they'd call me Makita/I just want my friends to understand/I just want to be seen,” she sings on the album's opener, “MM M.”
The paradox of communicating insecurity in art is that it's more effective when you do it from a position of confidence, one where you can express your emotions appropriately. And noting this paradox can feel uncomfortable. “I think it's much more damaging to go through life pretending than just being honest about how you feel and the proximity of good and bad feelings. It's foolish to pretend that the two are so far apart. To allow for a grey, silvery blur, that's what I was trying to do,” says Hickey Kallenbach. “I think I had less of that false self and some clarity on my part. I was more immersed in my own experience of moving through the world. We've been lucky to have been doing this for a long time, and we've played a lot of places, and it's very easy to walk away from the joy of inviting people in. I think for a long time I was too self-conscious to share that space honestly.”
Kennedy also had newfound confidence as he embarked on the creation of If I Don't Make It. “The year we made the album was actually the first time I started to come to terms with my instrument. I was like, 'Actually, I really love playing drums!' Before that it was a lot more complicated, it was like a battle,” he says. “I had a bit of a complex about[playing],” continues Kennedy, who took up percussion as a child but quit as he became obsessed with electronic music as a teenager, only to return when the trio formed Still House Plants while attending university in Glasgow. “I wasn't too concerned about being technical, but I was very critical of myself.” This newfound confidence was partly circumstantial. “It was right around the same time that I got my first full-sized drum kit since I was a kid,” he points out. It was gratifying to find that he was skilled enough to tune his new instrument, which in turn helped him internalize the fact that he was now an accomplished performer.
And yet The House Plants' command of each instrument is largely down to the relentless evolution of their songwriting process. According to Hickey Kallenbach, their songs “come from one of the band discovering something.” “It might be a noise, or a tempo, or Finn playing a chord and his ring hits something and makes a sparkly sound, and we're all like, 'Oh, that's so cool,' and then we just keep playing that bit over and over and over again. We usually rehearse for about four hours, and we'll just grind away at one thing, stop and chat, come back and keep going.”
Since October 2020, all three have been based in the same city for the first time since their debut. Whereas previously they would cram as many rehearsals as possible into the week when they were all together, now they have been able to maintain a regular routine. The lockdown has given them extra time, and the generosity of Café OTO, which has allowed them to use their project space since their 2019 residency, has given them the luxury of being “pretty relentless” with their work, as Hickey Kallenbach puts it. Once they have “something” to stay focused on, she explains, it's not so much a process of polishing, but relentlessly moving forward. “Polishing is beautiful, but it's too simple a word. I feel like we're on a bit more of a journey with everything we write. There are moments of tension, and sometimes one of us thinks, 'this isn't good,' but we don't give up, even when we hit little pitfalls. ” The band's music also continues to evolve through live shows. A series of shows in the US in early 2023 was also important in “solidifying the shape,” in her words. “The way things change is really subtle: the speed of something, someone playing louder or quieter than usual, the monitors are so bad you can't hear something even though you're in the same place. All of these subtleties are part of the timeline.”
If they had never gone into the studio, Still House Plants' songs would have continued to evolve forever. “It's interesting to think what this album would have sounded like if we'd recorded it six months ago, or six months from now,” Clarke says. A recording of a particular song, or even a live performance, is really just a one-off snapshot of something organic, frozen in a form that was only taken at that moment. Even when writing lyrics, Hickey Kallenbach says, “A lot of it is mood- and place-dependent.” This means that “If I Don't Make It” naturally takes on the character of the lockdown studio in East London where they recorded it. In fact, it was the last piece of work made there before the studio closed down for good. “There was a real feeling of, 'We've got to make it good!' I feel like that's reflected in the title,” Kennedy says.
The studio sessions were no excuse to pause and take stock. “When we go to record, we go in with the same enthusiasm, the same instinct,” says Hickey Kallenbach. They played with layers, techniques and equipment, running instruments through Leslie's cabinet speakers, vocals through cheap DJ software and, at one point, sidechaining Kennedy's snare drum to the guitar. Their growing confidence was evident here, too. “I felt like I had a much better understanding of what I wanted from the studio than I did on the last record, what all this stuff was doing and I was able to dissect it all,” says Kennedy. Clarke says he hopes rehearsals will give them the chance to dig in as much as they can in the studio. “The sessions really push me to be mindful of time, but one day I'd really, really like to take my time.”
The organic presence of Still House Plants' sound remains the same. It's comprised of a simple, sparse palette of guitars, drums, and vocals. Yet, through the relentless process that has led to if i don't make it, the band continues to find more possibilities within those boundaries, and as a result, their music has the potential to radically change listeners' expectations of those instruments. “It's natural to think of the vocals as being up front, the drums as driving, and the guitars as being like bricks, but we move it all around quite a bit,” says Hickie-Kallenbach. The drums on if i don't make it often take on a melodic quality. The vocals, repeated, looped, and fragmented, become like thumping beats. “The important thing to remember is that the guitars are just metal and wood,” Clark says of their guitars. “Don't get too caught up in what they're 'supposed' to do.”
This is in part due to Kennedy and Hickey Kallenbach's love of electronic music, which predates the band, where traditional instrumental roles are often more deconstructed. “I grew up listening to a lot of house, garage, and grime with my brothers. That kind of loopy, time-weird, floating, weird music has influenced the way I sing, find weird patterns, and self-sample,” says Hickey Kallenbach. And yet the band remains fixated on the physicality of their setup, with the three musicians at their instruments, looking at each other, and reacting to subtle (and likely unconscious) cues. “We don't count, we're not numbers-based or time-based,” says Hickey Kallenbach. “We look at each other and know how to get to the next part. We communicate and share in a more external way than metric counting.” What's remarkable about “if i don't make it, i love u, then” is the extent to which it welcomes the listener anew into its indefinable, wordless world of creation. “When we've played it live[in the past]people have said it feels tense and very introverted because we're all staring at each other,” Hickey Kallenbach continues, “but this time, we're offering so much more than that.”
Nevertheless, The Houseplants' new album, “If I Don't Make It, I Love U”, will be released on April 12th via Bison Records. The band will be touring the UK and Europe next month. Tickets can be purchased here.