Quiet Houses have released their debut album we’re all in love via AWAL, arriving alongside new single ‘made for love’. Written over the past three years, the full-length follows six years as a band and a decade-long relationship between Jamie Stewart and Hannah Elliott. The result feels like a bright indie-pop debut built around romance, friendship, community and all the messy forms connection can take.
That gives the album an immediate emotional shape. Some of the songs draw from Jamie and Hannah’s own lives, others from the people around them, and some sit somewhere in between. What ties them together is a shared fixation on love, not only the romantic version, but the ways closeness, shared history and growing up alongside other people can quietly define the songs you end up writing.
An indie-pop debut full of heart and humour
That wider idea comes through especially clearly on ‘made for love’, which sits at the centre of the album. Built around chiming guitars, bright synths and one of the most direct choruses on the tracklist, the song takes on modern dating with real frustration and a good sense of humour. Quiet Houses frame the search for connection against dull Hinge dates, poor communication and the isolating effect of endless choice, which stops the sweetness from sanding off its sharper edges.
The same mix of softness and self-awareness appears to run through the record. we’re all in love was written in short pockets of time around work and everyday life during the pair’s early London years, and that gives it a grounded feel before you even hear it. Sonically, it sounds like a record that lets guitar-pop brightness and synth-pop lift carry a lot of emotional detail. More importantly, it sounds like a debut built from ordinary days, close relationships and the slightly obsessive urge to keep returning to love as both subject and running joke.
That joke helps, because an album this openly preoccupied with love could easily tip too sweet if the writing did not leave room for awkwardness, frustration and self-awareness. Instead, it sounds like Quiet Houses understand that love is often ridiculous, badly timed and tangled up with whatever else life is throwing at you. The band admitting they had to rename songs so the tracklist did not fill up with the word ‘love’ only makes the whole thing more endearing.
Quiet Houses also arrive here with a fair wind behind them. They have played The Great Escape, supported Esme Emerson and picked up support from BBC Introducing, BBC Radio 1, Wonderland, CLASH and The Skinny. They will also head out on their biggest UK headline tour so far this October, with dates in Edinburgh, Newcastle, Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol and London. That gives we’re all in love the feel of a genuine stepping-out moment, but the more appealing thing is its outlook. It sounds like the sort of debut that wants to leave listeners a little more open-hearted than it found them, and that is a pretty winning place to start.
You can listen to we’re all in love here and follow Quiet Houses on Instagram.
