Ground Control Touring

lots of hands

into a pretty room — lots of hands’ debut on Fire Talk Records — exists in the tear-stained early mornings of adolescence, just as the sun makes its first appearance over the horizon and thoughts of the night before begin to subside. A collage of reworked demos, freewheeling session standouts, and swatches of instrumental electronics, into a pretty room emerges as lots of hands’ most thoughtful work to-date. Solemn yet hopeful, into a pretty room occupies the space between moments of tragedy and triumph, offering a touching rumination on grief and loss, growing up and letting go.

Billy Woodhouse and Elliot Dryden, the core duo behind lots of hands, first connected in a Newcastle school music program at age 16. At that point, Woodhouse had been tinkering with lots of hands as a solo musical outlet, self-releasing music on Soundcloud and quietly beginning work on 2020’s mistake. Shortly before that record’s release, Dryden properly joined lots of hands, an effort which was quickly thwarted by global circumstances outside of anyone’s purview. Separated by geography and global chaos, Woodhouse and Dryden began work on lots of hands remotely, exchanging demos online to craft what would become 2021’s largely instrumental there’s someone in this room just like you, and 2023’s cult favorite fantasy. into a pretty room marks the duo’s first truly collaborative effort, with Dryden often trekking the vast northern English countryside to write and record in Woodhouse’s bedroom studio.

Between pints of beer and rounds of Fortnite, the two slowly chipped away at into a pretty room, whose name is lifted from a pair of demos recorded and released in a short span across November of 2023. The earnest tenderness of these tracks — “into a pretty room” and “the rain”, which appear newly re-recorded for the album — served as guiding light while the duo self-engineered the remainder of into a pretty room. Alongside these newly recorded songs appear Dryden’s unearthed demos, mined and reworked by Woodhouse. Lead single “game of zeroes” puts Dryden front and center on a Hank Williams-inspired ode to coming up short. “I play a game of zeroes,” he sings atop acoustic guitar, piano and digital frills, “Everyone but me will always win.” Elsewhere, “masquerade” interrogates defense mechanisms through electronic-speckled indie folk that is both jaded and joyful.

Dryden’s tracks appear alongside Woodhouse’s own songs, which span from touching instrumentals written for family, meant to help usher them through a chapter of monumental loss, to whispered ballads sung with loved ones. “All of my friends agree, you’re in my head,” Woodhouse intones alongside close collaborator and former roommate Mage Tears, “in my head with me.” On the understated late album stunner, “run your mouth,” he imagines a lost one as “a bunch of stars,” and ends the song fixated on “thoughts and memories of us.” Woodhouse’s contributions across into a pretty room ache with loss, but settle gracefully into sparkling ambient sonics that propel the record on its trajectory of self-discovery and acceptance. “Death is just a word, the feelings a reminder of past nights in the cold,” he filters through pitch corrected vocals on “the rain,” before sighing a resigned “oh well.”

These individually conceived tracks passed back and forth between the duo, as they ventured into their first moments of writing in the same place at the same time. “backseat 30” is the duo’s first joint venture, and the most immediate song in their discography, transforming youthful anxieties into an explosive anthem. “I don’t wanna waste my life up,” Woodhouse manifests atop layers of twangy and kinetic instrumentation, “hitting the backseat 30, talking with the dogs and the birdies, getting my nails all dirty.” Early album centerpiece, “barnyard,” marks another proper collaboration on the record, with Woodhouse and Dryden’s vocals intertwining and reflecting a quiet sadness as looped guitars swirl in a pool of sparkling instrumentation: “I’ll brush your hair through a nightmare, breathing in the country air.”

Newly relocated from Leeds to their current base of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, lots of hands is anchored by the duo’s friendship, which emanates across the album’s 14 tracks. While conceived across painful moments of growth and grief, into a pretty room is a decidedly hopeful effort, crafted between two friends who have spent the better part of the last decade supporting each other through life’s challenges.