Joan & The Giants continue their winning streak with their gorgeous new single “Looking For a Reason.” Grace Newton-Wordsworth’s voice is always stunning, but it really soars in this cathartic piece of alt-pop. It’s no wonder that listening to “Looking For a Reason” stirs emotions, as this song’s lyrics reflect an especially challenging time in Grace’s life.
“At the time we were making this, I was going through a pretty terrible time,” she recalled. “I was depressed, dating chaotic people, spending way too much money on going out and not nearly enough on looking after myself. I remember being at home one day, feeling really down about my life, opening up a Logic session, and somehow the entire song — lyrically and melodically — just came out in about 15 minutes. It was so easy to write because I wasn’t overthinking it. It almost felt like writing a diary entry. To me, the lyrics have this kind of satirical quality to them, but they’re also completely honest. Sometimes you just want a song that sits in the shit with you rather than trying to pull you out of it, and I think that’s what this song does for me.”
Grace said the band recorded this song with Holy Holy’s Oscar Dawson at Premises Studio in London earlier this year. She remembers this process fondly, noting it was “such a wonderfully collaborative song for us as a band. It’s basically a live recording — we were all set up in the room together, tracked it at the same time, and within a couple of hours, the song was done.”
Catch Joan & The Giants supporting daezy at The Night Cat in Ngar-go/Fitzroy on October 9.
Photo credit: Meg Houghton