Blending luscious melodies and cascading guitars with a vivacious blend of dreamy, atmospheric noise, London alt-rockers Heavy Heart released their new single 'Bed Bug' on January 23. The deeply emotional cut is the first of three tracks mixed and co-produced by Grammy Award-winning producer Gabe Wax (The War On Drugs, Fleet Foxes, Soccer Mommy).
Who are you?
I'm Anna Vincent and I sing and play guitar in Heavy Heart. The rest of the band is made up of Patrick Fitzroy (guitar), James Vincent (guitar) and Craig Brown (drums).
Tell us something about yourself and how you came to be where you are today.
We started the band as a bedroom project in my flat in New Cross, south east London, with just a couple of guitars and a drum machine. Heavy Heart as a concept, as a pair of words, had always embodied the two sides of what I was interested in sonically and lyrically - loud and quiet, dissonant and melodic, angry and melancholy - so this became the blueprint for the music we wanted to make. We put out a demo tape and people seemed to like what we were doing, so we decided to put a full live band together and start doing some shows. In 2016 we embarked on a project to write, record and release a new track each month of the year, and in 2017 we collaborated with vinyl-only label I Can & I Will to release all 12 songs as a limited-edition LP called 'Keepsake'.
Give us an idea of your musical style and influences.
It's always hard describing your own music in terms of genre, but people who are not us have said it's dream pop or alt-rock, so we'll go with that. For me, it's all about songs, so I think you could strip what we do back to its bare bones and it would (or should) still work, but we happen to enjoy wrapping it all up in dreamy clouds of loud guitars. Dynamics are also really important to us, and so is melody - I love having something delicate backed by this monumental wall of sound. Power and fragility in the same moment. As far as influences go, we have a lot, but in terms of sheer dynamics, heart and pure, searing guitar beauty, we love things like Smashing Pumpkins, The Twilight Sad, Jeff Buckley, Nirvana and Blonde Redhead.
Explain the production and writing process behind your songs.
Normally I come up with the skeleton of a song, maybe a vocal melody, basic guitar parts, and then we develop and demo ideas together to flesh out the music. I usually have quite a strong idea about how I want it to sound from the outset, but some of our best songs, I think, have been the ones where the other guys have taken the original idea somewhere quite different.
Collaboration can be a difficult and turbulent thing, because understandably people are protective of their ideas, but it's a good discipline and a great life lesson to realise that you're better off being part of something with others than isolating yourself creatively. Patrick has produced everything we've done previously, and we record a lot at home. It's all very DIY, done on a shoestring, but that forces you to be resourceful and creative.
Tell us a little about your new single.
I would say 'Bed Bug' is a weird, uneasy, nocturnal love song. It's about lethargy and obsession, staying in bed all day and awake all night, feeling your skin crawl and your nerves itch. It's about loving sometime to the point of self-destruction, just wanting to feel the way it felt the first time. I liked the idea of this parasitic relationship, which is kind of one-sided; of this creature who comes out at night to bite and drink blood, who needs the other person to survive. Love isn't pretty and perfect, but it can still be beautiful in a way; you lay all your insecurities and ugliness bare and just hope that the other person can handle it.
This is the first of three tracks we'll be releasing this year which were mixed and co-produced by Gabe Wax. It was great having a new set of ears on the songs, and we were really excited by his production contributions too. It was a chance to really play with dynamics and arrangement, so the verses are pretty stark, cut right down to the bone, and then the choruses are, by contrast, a kaleidoscope, flooded with lushness and light.
Can we catch up with you at any forthcoming live shows?
We're playing this week at The Shacklewell Arms in London (Wednesday 30th January) and we'll have a bunch more dates announced in the coming weeks.
How's the year looking, plans-wise?
We'll be releasing two more singles this side of the summer, and at the same time we're continuing to work on more music which will either become an album or a couple of EPs. We will be playing shows around the UK and hopefully a few European dates and festivals too.
Where can we hear more of your music?
It's all on Spotify, Soundcloud, Bandcamp and YouTube.
What social media platforms can we find you on?
Facebook // Twitter // Instagram
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