HONNE On Growing With Their Music And Carving Out Narratives With ‘OUCH’

HONNE’s music is always good company to keep us warm on a cold night.

The English electronic musical duo Andy Clutterbuck and James Hatcher made their return to Manila last Monday (September 23) to host an album signing event at local record store Ted Ellis. Commemorating the release of their freshly dropped album OUCH that premiered on September 6, the album cover decorated every rack of the store, with their posters plastered on the walls.

The new album signifies the duo’s new stage in adulthood, welcoming a new chapter of transition from their youth anthems in Love Me / Love Me Not and debut album Warm On A Cold Night. It follows their 2022 release, LET’S JUST SAY THE WORLD ENDED A WEEK FROM NOW, WHAT WOULD YOU DO?, where they collaborated with the likes of NIKI, Khalid, Griff, and more. This new album is incredibly raw and honest. From exploring themes of death and grief in the track “Dents in the Sofa” to sharing messages on the beauty of life on “Happy Day,” the hitmaker duo showcases their storytelling and lyrical genius.

HONNE sat with Billboard Philippines to discuss their production process for this new album, the duo’s fondest memories performing in the Philippines, and growing up alongside their music.

Billboard Philippines: Hello James and Andy! Welcome back to the Philippines. HONNE are definitely no stranger to the country, what is it about the Philippines that draws you to make it a staple destination on each of your tours?

Andy: We just love it here. Well, it’s not hard to explain. Every time we come we just get such a warm feeling that comes towards us. I think the people that we meet are so friendly, so smiley and like, approachable. And from like a musical show point of view, everyone’s so good at singing. It’s mad, like the volume at which the crowd sings back at us is crazy.

James: We barely need to be there.

Andy: Yeah, it’s so, so nice.

That’s definitely our karaoke culture carrying onto the concerts — we treat concerts like one big karaoke. What are some of your favorite memories in the Philippines? What do you always look forward to when you’re here?

James: I think the last time we played  was Araneta Coliseum and that was definitely one of our favorite shows ever, if not our favorite of all time. 

Yeah, it was like I think we kind of both don’t really feel famous or (feel) like anybody who knows who we are, still. Even though we keep going to different places and there’s loads of people turning up. After that show, I think we were like, “Oh, that feels like we’re actually famous.”  Like the people, there were so many people there, and they were all singing the words, and seeming really excited to be there. It felt like (a) proper big, really exhilarating show.  So yeah, it’s very special.

On the behalf of Billboard Philippines, we’d like to congratulate you on this new album, OUCH. Sonically, this new album houses a new, more downbeat kind of sound unlike your previous releases. What drew this switch-up?

Andy: That’s a good question. We tried to just change with every album. So, every album that we’ve released is different to the last. Yeah, I don’t know. I guess it must in some ways reflect like a period of time in our lives. So yeah, I don’t know. It all just comes out and whatever comes out, just comes out if that makes sense.

James: It’s hard to say, and it’s not even necessarily to say that the next album will be even more chill or really upbeat. It could go anywhere. It’s kind of an experiment as we go along, to see what happens.

You know what they say, your art is a reflection of what you’re doing when you’re not making art. In that sense, do you think it was also a shifting in the seasons?

James: I think probably you [speaking to Andy] were particularly energy-reliant about having to be a new dad and, being a new dad, you probably wanted something quite peaceful in your life on the other side of it. You couldn’t always be having that (mimics club music beat).

Andy: There was a lot of chaos in my home life. So yeah, I needed some calming music. I think it’s right that music does reflect what’s going on.

It’s sufficient to say that OUCH is a mark of your transition into adulthood, starting your own families, and the like in your discography. How would you describe the transition from writing youth anthems to making songs about this new stage of life?

James: I feel like it’s been quite like a slow curve for us. (He starts tracing a literal curve) Because we, like Warm on a Cold Night was kind of like a little bit more downbeat and chill electronic, and then we went quite upbeat with Love Me / Love Me Not. We went up there with like “Me & You” and “Day One.”  And then no song without you went like off a cliff – down to as chill as it goes for COVID around that time, where – I mean, that is what was happening when we were writing it. Just before that started, and then we were back in our bedrooms.

And then we came out of COVID and we were like, “We’re free!” And did like a pop kind of record and, then got married and had kids. We need something to chill out to (that kind of) record. It feels like there’s been a transition, but it’s so slow. It’s like watching a plant grow or something, you know what I mean? Like, you almost don’t see it but it’s happening.

That’s really cool you see it that way, considering as a listener, we can tangibly feel all of these changes happening, just going through one listen of your discography. This new album is deeply personal and anecdotal. In that sense, what song was the easiest to compose and which song was the most difficult to fully convey in music?

Andy: I think “Songs in My Head”?

James: Yeah, he wrote it in his sleep.

Andy: I wrote it in bed. Yeah, I mean that sounds like a joke. It was written at like three o’clock in the morning, just in my head without any instruments or anything like that, so that was quite easy to do.

James: As easy as it gets? 

Andy: Easy to compose but slightly harder to, well, we had to kind of reproduce it which James really helped with. So that was that. The hardest to write “Dents in the Sofa” was not necessarily hard to write, but like is a difficult subject perhaps. I won’t take it too deep, but it’s a story about how — to put it simply — how I thought I was watching my wife almost die during her childbirth. So that did go quite deep,  but she’s fine and our baby’s fine as well so it’s all good. But yeah, the “Dents in the Sofa”, that song was kind of written from a point of view that “Gosh, imagine if it had gone really bad,” and that I’d come home from the hospital alone. There would be a dent in the sofa where you know she used to sit, but anyway, it’s all fine in the end so that’s okay.

James: The other one that was easy was “Girl in the Orchestra” — I think that was very easy. Because I made that like, kind of choir vocal part at the start with loads and loads of layers of vocals and we’ve always just loved that chord sequence. We’ve been trying to put that specific chord sequence in a song for I reckon, six years or something.

And Andy just came in one day and was like I want to write it about like falling in love with a girl in an orchestra from school, like back when I was a kid. It just spewed out of us straight away, didn’t it?

Andy: I think when you have such a strong theme, like lyrics just can easily come because there’s so much to play with. One of my favorite lyrics is from the album is on “Girl in the Orchestra,” which is “When you play Debussy / It sends me Clair de loony.”

James: So yeah, we could use composers, classical song names, and one of my favorite lines from that is “Started learning tuba / Just to get close to ‘ya,” which is like so many fun things that we could put in and have a good time with.

Bouncing off of that, I just wanted to ask about how this album follows a narrative from stories of high school sweethearts in “Girl in the Orchestra” to exploring themes of life and death in “Dents in the Sofa” — each element of the production is extremely detailed. When tackling such difficult themes in music, how do you go about the storytelling process?

Andy: Yeah, it’s a tricky one because, obviously, I want to write the things that are as personal as possible because I want it to be authentic. But on the flip side of that, I don’t want it to be so personal to me that other people can’t relate to (it). So, I think it’s tricky to find that balance between being personal and authentic, but also being relatable, and I think I’m okay at it.

James: Yeah, you’re good at treading the tightrope, which is important because obviously we want everyone to be able to enjoy our music. Not just to select few people who have been in a similar situation, so that’s tricky. I’m just going to say that the album does go on quite a journey from high school to these life and death moments. It comes out the other side and we have songs like Happy Day which is a song from the perspective of my son. So, once we’ve had children and he was born, there was this wonderful moment  where he could only say the words “Yes,” “No,” and “Happy day,” so I wrote a song about him exploring the world and seeing it through his eyes. Then, at the end of the hour, I’m skipping on a few songs that are more of a message to my children in the future saying that “Life is precious and you’ve only got one, so make the most of it.”