Following the release of her latest single ‘Glass Castles’, LOCK had the pleasure of speaking with Dover-based alternative artist quinn bailey to discuss her latest release, future plans and what influences her music.
Hi quinn bailey and welcome to LOCK. For our readers, could you please let us know a little about yourself?
I’m an alternative artist based in the East Kent scene! I started gigging solo doing acoustic jazz sets when I was about 17, 6 years ago now, but the band formed about a year and a half ago and we’ve been writing together since. Together we’re a super hot indie-grunge quartet, bringing heartfelt, glittery, guitar driven songs to the forefront of the scene.
Your latest single “Glass Castle” is deeply introspective and raw. Can you share the story behind the song and what inspired it?
I guess it rings somewhat true of the subject matter in the song but now I think about it, I actually don’t remember the moment specifically I came up with Glass Castle. I know it was one I wrote by myself, I’ve still got the voice memo of the first demo I sent to the band. I remember I’d had that opening line, “I live in a Glass Castle’, written down for a while and I’d been sitting on that concept as something I wanted to delve deeper into; the image of dissociation as this protective fortress you’ve built around yourself, and the subsequent isolation that comes with it, as if you’re watching life pass by around you through a sheet of glass with everyone and everything at an arms distance from you as a result.
You describe the track as exploring dissociation and isolation. How do you translate such complex personal experiences into Music?
When I write, I try to imagine how whatever feeling I’m talking about in the lyric might sound. So in Glass Castle for example, it’s a lot of anguish, desperation type of feeling, which to me is very chesty sounding; hence why we went for that proper swelling, pulsey bass that you feel in your ribs, in the pre-choruses where everything kinda strips back and the drums build up, the drums are reminiscent of a heartbeat to symbolise physically running away from the “monster” depicted in the lyric. The vocal in those pre-choruses as well, almost trials off into a scream to try and represent the turmoil being felt by the protagonist in the song. So I guess a lot of the writing process in pretty literal – this is how it feel, and this is how that feeling sounds.
“Glass Castle” blends post-punk urgency with shoegaze atmospheres. How did you approach melding these styles while maintaining emotional coherence?
It wasn’t something we set out to do on purpose in all honesty; I had an idea in mind of how I wanted the final product to sound, I took what I had written to the band and this is what we came up with. Between the four of us, I think we have a good collective understanding of how to curate a sonic landscape that speaks in coherence with what I’m trying to convey
lyrically, so the final version of Glass Castle is the product of all of our understandings of the lyrics and how they translate into music.
Were there any particular production moments or textures in “Glass Castle” that made you feel, “This captures exactly what I’m trying to say”?
We created Glass Castle in stages – I wrote the lyrics and melody first, guitars followed, and then we wrote drums and bass at a later date. Songwriting is a pretty “trust the process” thing in this band; we all come from pretty diverse backgrounds musically, so putting together something coherent that represents the message of the song is usually a trial and error process. Its a bit like getting a bucket and all of us throw in a different coloured paint to make brown, so we look at it and think, “right, what do we need to add or take away from this to get the colour we want?”.
You describe your music as “music to mend the wounded soul.” How do you see “Glass Castle” fitting into that mission?
I think putting any sort of art out there that discusses your emotions in such depth is a pretty vulnerable thing to do – there are sentiments in some of my songs that my closest friends don’t even know about. So I like to think that opening up on that scale offers a degree of relatability, and in my own experience finding music that you can relate to is a pretty healing experience. So with Glass Castle, my hope was anybody hearing the song who feels lonely or suffers with any kind of dissociative problems like I do, can find solace in the idea that they aren’t alone in feeling that way; like, “oh dang, they’re talking about me, I guess I’m not as alone as I thought”, and that can be such a cathartic feeling.
As an emerging alternative artist, how do you carve out your own voice while drawing from such diverse influences?
In the band, we all come from really diverse backgrounds musically: my bassist Jan does funk and jazz-fusion stuff, my drummer was originally in a thrash band, and my guitarist started out dong a lot of blues, classic rock, Pink Floyd stuff. Personally I started out singing jazz and writing jazz-ballad style songs, so blending all of that influence to create a coherent sound was landed us in a pretty unique sonically. In our local scene, I wouldn’t say there’s anyone really the us: we’re not really trying to be any specific thing, we just mess about together and see what we can come up with.
Do you see this track as part of a larger project or phase in your music? How does it fit into your evolving sound and vision?
Yes! It’s been a long time coming but we have our first EP completely recorded and just undergoing final edits. The songs are all written from the perspective of the same character as Glass Castle, who is essentially just me but a bit more dramatic. Songwriting is definitely a way of expressing myself in a lot more depth than I would ever feel comfortable in real life, so, like Glass Castle, all the other songs talk about something I’ve experienced but in this really thorough, all-encompassing way that leaves no stone unturned. I think when writing that’s kind of my thing: just looking at every feeling really deeply and taking 3 minutes or so to reflect on each detail, no matter how minor.
Are there themes or emotions you’re looking forward to exploring in future releases?
The next project, beyond this EP, is a lot less depressing thematically. There’s a relatively new song we’ve been playing at our live shows called Rot, where the core lyric is “I don’t smell the rot”, and it talks about understanding that the past has been painful and I guess pretty rotten so to speak, but it’s okay to let it lie. Some things change, others stay the same, but the world keeps spinning. I guess in that sense, our new material has gained a lot of maturity; some of the songs on the first EP I’ve been playing live since I was 17, and I’ve gained a lot of insight since then. Not undermining that younger version of me, they’re still very much alive in me and I still feel everything just as deeply as they did, more celebrating their growth and allowing them to become more than the hardships they’ve been through, which is a stumbling block the protagonist in Glass Castle is still struggling against.
Finally, if you could sum up “Glass Castle” in just three words, what would they be?
Confronting, candid and fervent.