Music
Marian Hill Are Working Backward to Move Forward
After their song "Whisky" unexpectedly hit big, Marian Hill work on their debut album "ACT ONE."
Marian Hill
© Dorothy Hong
Updated June 29, 2016: Marian Hill released their debut album, "ACT ONE," on Republic Records last Friday.
Years ago, in a Haverford Township, Penn., middle school production of “The Music Man," Samantha Gongol and Jeremy Lloyd played main characters Marian Peru and Harold Hill. The two had no clue at the time that, many years later, they would start a band in college. But as soon as they began collaborating musically, they knew exactly what to call the project: Marian Hill, a combination of the names of the two characters, the perfect homage to the first time they shared a stage.
Earlier this year, Marian Hill signed to Universal Music group affiliates Photo Finish/Republic Records, which released their “Sway” EP in February. Since then, they've performed at major festivals all over the U.S. including Firefly, Made in America, ACL Festival, among others. Now they're about to set out on a headlining tour of North America, playing rooms as big as The House of Blues in Dallas and The Roxy in Los Angeles.
They've also been at Universal’s recording studio in New York City — Gongol and Lloyd both live in Brooklyn — working on Marian Hill’s debut album.
“We have a bunch of songs piling up,” says Lloyd, who predicts the album will drop this fall. Not bad for two people who wrote their first song together barely two years ago. But as Gongol says of their creative partnership, “We have always been musical kindred spirits.”
They first met in seventh grade in Haverford. Gongol started piano lessons at 7 and was gifted her first guitar by her father at 14. She describes herself as well-behaved. "I was really into horseback riding," she says. "I was really bad at math and I could’ve gotten into more trouble. But I was always interested in music.”
Lloyd, whose father is the director of the choral and vocal studies program at Haverford and Bryn Mawr Colleges, started violin lessons at 4, piano lessons at 8 and taught himself guitar in high school. Like Gongol, Lloyd says he knew at a young age he’d end up making music professionally.
Samantha Gongol of Marian Hill
© Dorothy Hong
Samantha Gongol of Marian Hill
© Dorothy Hong
Marian Hill
© Dorothy Hong
Gongol and Lloyd started writing songs in high school — but not together. They bonded over the music of songwriter Ingrid Michaelson and Eminem. They shared their work with each other, offered praise and advice, but never collaborated. “We were still figuring out how to write alone,” explained Lloyd. “That was one of the stepping stones: to learn how to write as individuals before bringing someone else into the process.”
After high school, Gongol studied music business at New York University, and Lloyd went to Yale for theater with a focus in music. They caught up on each other’s lives and songs during school breaks. Over spring break in 2013, Lloyd shared a beat he’d been working on, and Gongol started singing over it. Unaware of what was happening, they wrote their first song together. “It happened very fast,” recallsLloyd, “and we both thought ‘What is this? We’ve never heard anything like this.’"
“Whisky,” the duo’s first track, sounds more like white wine than whiskey. It’s smooth and slow, but it’s about a love that burns red-hot. “All of these shot boys think I’m divine, but I don’t want to waste it,” Gongol seductively sings atop Lloyd’s minimal beat. Haunted vocal samples flitter, as Gongol commands, “Sip it slow.” A rumbling bass line links up with the skeletal drums, but the song never explodes, never loses itself in the fire. Through its calmness, Marian Hill was born.
Jeremy Lloyd of Marian Hill
© Dorothy Hong
Samantha Gongol of Marian Hill
© Dorothy Hong
Samantha Gongol of Marian Hill
© Dorothy Hong
Lloyd, an avid reader of popular music blogs like The Hype Machine, sent the finished track to more than 60 blogs. The song blew up. People asked, “Where can we find more of your songs?” “Where can we see you play?” “Do you have an album?” That’s when Lloyd and Gongol realized they didn't have any answers — they didn’t have any more songs.
“We had to work backwards,” said Gongol. “Things started happening so quickly when ‘Whisky’ got popular, and everyone started asking us what our other songs sounded like, and we were like, 'Oh, we haven’t written any others songs yet.’ We had to quickly figure out what our sound was, so that’s what we did.”
“When we wrote that song, we weren’t a band, we were just two friends having fun,” adds Lloyd. “We can try to rehash that now, but now we’re Marian Hill and we’re writing Marian Hill songs and it has to sound like a Marian Hill song. There are more factors now, including fans that care, which is great. It was different just sitting there writing the first song with none of this in mind.”
Life has been a whirlwind since. They speedily wrote and recorded more songs, got signed and have been writing and recording non-stop. Rather than stifle their newfound collective creativity, the urgency has motivated them.
“I thrive with deadlines,” said Lloyd. “We need to write songs, and that’s the priority.”
Marian Hill is a thing now. But it’s still just two friends who starred alongside each other in a middle school play. There’s a label and fans, and there are tour dates (see below) and expectations, but none of this gets in the way of their deep friendship and respect for one another as musicians.
“He’s a great producer and [is] always committed to making the best song,” said Gongol of Lloyd. “He always takes extra time to finesse the track, to highlight the melody and find the nuance that really brings the song together.”
Lloyd reciprocated the admiration. “Sam is an incredible vocalist,” he said. “Her voice is so clean and in tune, and the variety of expression she has is a joy. She’s super-open to collaboration, which is very important, and we have a very active dialogue when writing songs. It’s a special relationship.”
Marian Hill, despite the sudden success, is still very much in its infancy. But when I asked Gongol what the group’s ultimate goal is, she responded without hesitation with one word: “Grammy.” She said she’s joking, but I get the impression she’s dead serious.
“[The goal is] to reach as many people as possible with our music,” added Lloyd. “We love sharing our music. Nothing feels better than watching people derive joy from it. I joke with Sam that every time we finish writing a great song, we’ll never do it again.”
He paused, to build suspense, just like in Marian Hill’s songs, before finishing his thought. “But then we do it again," he said.