lots of hands is the duo of Billy Woodhouse and Elliot Dryden, who met in a Leeds school music program at age 16. It served as Woodhouse’s solo project until around 2020, when they released their first LP, mistake; the pair then started to work on music remotely, weaving together ambient instrumentation and tender, lo-fi folk through 2021’s there’s someone in this room just like you and 2023’s fantasy. into a pretty room, their new album and debut for Fire Talk, is billed as their first truly collaborative effort, with Dryden commuting through the northern English countryside to write and record in Woodhouse’s bedroom studio. Growth is an undercurrent more than the obvious throughline, as Woodhouse and Dryden spin old demos, new songs, and twinkling, glitched-out electronics into a record of almost ineffably hushed vulnerability and understated, muffled beauty. With Woodhouse producing and properly mixing the record, there’s a different kind of attention paid to the subtleties and cohesiveness of their songwriting, even as each moment it depicts seems to flit by like a whisper, or linger like a ghost – or both.
We caught up with lots of hands for the latest edition of our Artist Spotlight series to talk about the origins of the project, recording into a pretty room, getting lucky, and more.
Billy, lots of hands started out as your solo project. What excited you about making songs in the first place, especially in the context of the DIY SoundCloud community you found yourself in?
Billy Woodhouse: It felt like a lot of experimenting to get to a place where I was comfortable with how it sounded. I think that’s what the DIY community does so well – it borrows ideas from each other and explores sounds that have been done before, but haven’t been done in the context they’re placed in. It was a great little community to be in, especially when I was learning. I look back on that with some good thoughts. I’m in a position now where I feel like I’ve learned what I’ve learned, and it’s about trying to transform that and create new things,
Elliot, were you involved in a musical community in the same way before you started working with Bill?
Elliot Dryden: I mean, I had hardly written any songs until we started working together – maybe about five, and most of them were pretty bad. I’ve never really been part of a creative community like that. This is my first time bouncing ideas off each other.
You met a school music program when you were 16. Do you mind sharing your first impressions of each other?
ED: I didn’t have any friends because Bill joined a few weeks after the course started and was the first person I talked to. I thought they were a bit weird, but I didn’t have any other friends, so I was like, “I guess this guy will do.” [laughs] I found out they were still weird but pretty cool as well. We became really good friends quite fast.
What was it like from your perspective, Billy?
BW: Pretty much the same. We got paired together, we had to talk about music distribution in the industry, and we both had no fucking idea what we were talking about. I got really lucky because the rest of the songwriters in that course were pretty naff, to be honest. [laughs] It’s been really fun writing with Elliot.
Did it feel like an escape?
BW: Yeah, I think it still does, to be honest. It’s like a whole different world from the normal little lives that we lead.
ED: For me, especially in college, I had a pretty bad music taste before Bill made me listen to all the new songs.
BW: Mine was pretty ass, don’t get me wrong.
ED: Yours was pretty bad as well, but not in that time, it was alright. But yeah, I had my school friends, but I only really talk to two of them now, and I never really liked any of the other people. It was great to me somebody that was different from the usual kinds of people I hung out with. And that led to me listening to different kinds of music, which was good.
mage tears, who is featured on ‘in b tween’, was part of that SoundCloud community. What did it mean for you to include that collaboration on into a pretty room?
BW: It was great. I wish I had done more songs with her vocals, but her microphone was so ass that it was really hard to mix. [laughs] I was living in Leeds when we recorded it, so Elliot would come down from Newcastle, which is only about an hour on the train. We’d get through a couple of ideas, and sometimes mage tears would just come down from upstairs and ask to help out or if she could do some vocals. Moving in with her in general was good because she was a big inspiration for me, just because she was a bit older and had more experience in music, going into DIY. Which is why making this record felt kind of like a final point for me in that period.
Elliot, did being outside, taking walks or the train, and being in Billy’s studio activate different parts of your mind when thinking about this record?
ED: Maybe, I haven’t really thought about it. I think the train rides definitely, because we would go down to record something new or add to what we already had, and on the train ride home I’d listen to it on repeat to see what else we could do. So the train rides were definitely part of the writing proces, but I think the walks we did were more just about being bored. They might have influenced it in some way, I’m not sure.
BW: It’s probably important to note that Elliot, when writing this, lived in the actual middle of nowhere with his mom. But I definitely went out a couple of times while making the record.
ED: We like a good walk. I feel like you have different conversations when you’re outside.
Did you talk about music, or other things that filtered into the the songs?
ED: Both. We always talk about music stuff. I think we have our best conversations when we’re on a long walk.
BW: It’s important when you’re writing to be able to grow just a little bit – not too much. As two guys from the north, just grow a little more vulnerable.
Is there one conversation or moment of vulnerability that sticks out to you?
BW: This record, at the end of the day, is a lot of borrowed songs – songs that Elliot had written years ago that we brought back and reimagined. And I think just that sense of looking back was vulnerable enough. I went through a pretty crazy period of grief while writing it, and just living in a different city – I felt like was losing my brain a little bit. [laughs] We’ve probably not spoken about it as much as we’ve put it on the record, if that makes sense.
ED: Some of the songs, as Bill said, were from quite a few years ago, and it’s funny to reflect on the place where we were when we wrote them. We just laugh about it. I was the most unemployed person probably you’ve ever seen, in loads of debt.
The latest single, ‘barnyard’, seems to sketch out this idyllic, remote life, but it’s ultimately suffused with grief. That happens on a few song that might sound pretty and laid-back, like ‘run your mouth’, but the grief is something you can tune into the more time you spend with the record.
BW: That’s what I’d like it to be.
ET: We were listening to country music and music that kind of sounds happy and usually has happy lyrics. When we were writing the songs, we were like, “Oh, the lyrics aren’t very happy,” but the sounds were usually quite soft. I don’t know if that’s Bill’s production, or just the fact that, for my songs, I wrote them all acoustically.
‘backseat 30’ was the first song you wrote in a truly collaborative way, and the insecurities it lays out feel shared, maybe for that reason.
ED: For that one, I think Bill had the guitar part, and I wrote not even half a verse – something about folding clothes. Bill did the rest for that one, but I think it was something we were both thinking about when writing that album: You’re not 14 anymore. We actually need to get our shit together.
BW: A hundred percent. As for the contrast, I think that’s just what sums up our music as a whole. We’re a bit silly and goofy, but if you get into that shell, it’s important to listen to what we’re saying.
With ‘backseat 30’, I feel like the production turns that anxiety and innocence into ambition. Maybe it’s the drums, but it doesn’t just feel upbeat or goofy; it feels robust. What it was like for you, Bill, to focus on the mixing of a song – not just in terms of it sounding right, but more precise in feeling?
BW: It was really, really fun. That’s the first thing I’ll say. The actual crafting of all the songs was such an enjoyable experience, which isn’t something I’d had a lot of while making music before. I quite like the word “robust” – we were really eager to make it feel like we were moving forward, being a bit more clean and less rough around the edges. It definitely helped that we had Greg Obis from Chicago master it. That’s something I’ve never been able to do myself; it’s just mind-boggling. It was the first time I actually sat down and properly learned how to use the DAW and the plugins, treating it less like a toy and more like a piece of artwork we were trying to make, and sound good.
Did you have to find new ways to be playful with it, or was that something that came naturally?
BW: It definitely came naturally. As I was producing it, there was more fun shit I was finding out. I just went down a huge rabbit hole of production when I was doing the mixing. I feel like I’m in a place where I’m really ready to make some crazy-sounding music.
In the context of ‘beackseat 30’, what does getting lucky look like for you? Is that something you’ve discussed?
BW: When we were writing the last album, Elliot brought up the analogy of throwing pennies into a lake to try to get lucky. We were in a position where it felt like – maybe a bit rock bottom, maybe a bit like, how do I dig myself out of this situation without just hitting gold? The truth is, you gotta graft your way out of it. But I think we brought more of that analogy into this album and kind of elaborated on it. We talked about our personal experiences while still holding true to that idea of where we were.
Did you think about it in relation to music as well?
ED: Kind of. When Bill was living with mage tears, who kind of blew up overnight, we were like, “Damn, it would be nice if that happens to us.” She’s in America now, so maybe one day we might blow up like that.
BW: The lyrics to ‘backseat 30’ hint at this idea of the American dream, this over-the-top rock star life that Elliot and I were poking fun at when were talking about the idea of getting lucky or making it with our music. So it’s a bit of a balance between “We need to sort our shit out” and the idea that we’re going to be rock stars. We’re still in this in-between process, just riding the wave and seeing what goes. Still chucking those pennies, in a way.
A lot of the songs on into a pretty room are repurposed demos. Did you consider the line between a demo and a complete song, or a lots of hands song, in a new way?
BW: A hundred percent. It was so hard to find an endpoint, which is why we set ourselves such a definite, like, “We’re going to finish this by this day and get this many songs done.” You produce one song, and then you go do the next one, you learn something new, and you want to go back and apply it to the old shit. You just get caught in this endless cycle of mixing, throwing stuff out, bringing in new things. We just had these songs in mixing purgatory for so long. It’s definitely difficult to know when a demo is finished. Some songs still sound pretty demo-like to me, but hopefully not in a bad way.
Could you share something that inspires you about each other?
BW: I’ve always been envious of how Elliot can sit and write a structured song. I’ll have a lot of loops going on, and I’ll kind of make the song in Logic, if that makes sense. Whereas Elliot will just sit with a guitar and his vocal cords and rip some actual mad shit. That definitely inspires me. I still haven’t found a way to word this, even though I’ve said it before, but these songs are the first ones we’ve made that I consider, like, “song songs.” I’ll leave that to interpretation.
ED: For Bill, mine’s the opposite. Bill is very creative and knows how to make weird stuff sound good. That’s the good thing: we’got weird sound, but also–
BW: Level ground.
‘game of zeroes’ is definitely a “song song.”
BW: I was talking to my grandma after ‘game of zeroes’ came out, and she went, “This kind of stuff will make it big. Elliot knows how to write a song. Your stuff will get a cult following one day, but Elliot’s will make it big.” For a second, I was like, “Fuck you.” But also, yeah. You gotta write a “song song.”
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
lots of hands’ into a pretty room is out January 17 via Fire Talk.