Juliet Quick – Circles : Listen
“Circles” is about filtering out the feedback of others and just living inside yourself, even if that isn’t always the easiest place to be. I have trouble doing that—I have had this lifelong compulsion to be perceived as ‘good,’ even to people who I don’t think are ‘good!’ The particular kind of depression I was in when I wrote this song, though, gave me some relief from that at times. It was much more difficult to care about pleasing people. There are a handful of external voices that appear in the song—advice-givers, pedantic men, crust punks—who are kind of gently ignored. It is definitely a sad song but it is also about freedom.”
Juliet Quick
Deep in phase seventeen or so of this cruel year, feeling deep in the void, I could instantly relate to Juliet’s lovely song, and her words that sometimes even the bad feelings can be a break from other, different bad feelings. A reminder that sometimes things happen for a reason, unbeknownst to you, to shield you from harder things. Quick’s voice is exquisite, her writing organic and relatable, and the music timely.
Pre-order Glass Years here, out 3/5 on Substitute Scene Records.
Juliet Quick builds worlds. Her songs are stark, sweet, weary, frank, immediate, vulnerably plainspoken, always sharply observed. On her forthcoming Glass Years EP, Produced and engineered by Florist’s Rick Spataro, she carves out a space of her own by combining spare acoustics, playful synths, frenetic strings, and weeping lap steel. With these tools, the Hudson Valley-born, Brooklyn-living singer and songwriter reflects on climate terror, misogyny both subtle and unsubtle, self-interrogation, and holding on to hope.
Glass Years introduces itself with “Circles”. As acoustic guitar pulses around an arrangement that rises and falls around her, she floats through unmarked days between her bedroom and the hazy world outside, struggling to navigate 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.
