Graham: My name is Graham. I make music as Quickly Quickly. I've been playing piano since I was really young — my mom says I started when I was two, which I think might be a lie, but it sounds impressive so that's what I tell people. I don't come from a super musical family, but there's some casual music in my background and I always gravitated towards it. At some point in middle school I found out about beat music and got really into messing around on Logic Pro.

Graham: I broke my leg really badly right before freshman year of high school. I'd been a soccer kid, and when I couldn't play anymore I just dedicated all my time to music. I found out about SoundCloud, started posting beats, and somehow got connected to a community of producers through the platform. It slowly consumed my life.

Graham: After high school I felt like I had enough momentum to skip college. I moved to LA for a year, hated it — it was too much, I'd never been away from my family before. Then I moved back to Portland. When I got back in 2019 I decided I wanted to shed the beat-maker thing and start singing again. I'd played in a band in middle and high school doing pop-punk covers. So when I moved back, I unsheathed that and decided I wanted to be a singer-songwriter. Now I have two albums and I'm trying to figure out what the third one is going to look like. That's where we are today.

Weajue: I appreciate that whole rundown. It feels like there are so many layers of yourself all circling around the same thing — every pass you make, you're becoming a fuller version of yourself. Is there a moment in time where you felt like that was where you were the most you, without pretense?

Graham: Probably the closest I've felt to that is with the most recent album. I think it's the closest distillation of what my mission statement is — or was. I'm kind of in a place now where I've gone through so many musical evolutions, I've been interested in so much different stuff, and I have a hard time landing on what comes next. I made this folk-adjacent album, and now I'm trying to decide whether I want to keep doing that or do something entirely different. But up till this point, I think that record is the fullest I've been.

Weajue: Singer-songwriting can sometimes feel like it clashes with a production-heavy approach, but you've found a way to tie them together. How do you keep those two things working with each other?

Graham: I think it just comes from my background making beats. In the SoundCloud era there was this constant need to impress everyone — everyone wanted to make the craziest beat. I was always trying new production tricks to see how people would react. A lot of traditional singer-songwriters start with a guitar, write the lyrics, and come in with a clear idea of what the song should be. For me it's always been starting with sounds, starting with some crazy production thing. I tend to lean into maximalist choices that you don't always hear in folk or acoustic contexts.

Graham: I lament it sometimes, actually — a lot of what I listen to lately is very stripped back, but it's like I just can't help myself.

Weajue: When I think of maximalism in folk, Sufjan comes to mind, though he doesn't keep it throughout all his work. For this record, was there a sound you were chasing, something that felt like a starting point?

Graham: It was more of an amalgamation of everything I was listening to at the time. The initial idea was an acoustic album — most of the songs have acoustic guitar as the through-line. And then because I kept wanting to add things, the through-line of the record accidentally became acoustic songs with these production jump scares. These softer songs with crazy noise layered in. That sort of became the mission statement without me planning it.

Weadee: Jump scare is honestly the best way to describe it — it feels cohesive but also like there's always something beneath the surface. Does the noise in your music translate into your life too? Like is there always noise buzzing in your head?

Graham: I've always been drawn to abrasive sounds but never quite had the palette to make them myself. I'll use Death Grips as an example — I love Death Grips conceptually, but I don't find myself actually listening to them that much. It's more like the idea of abrasion that's always swirling around in my head. I wanted to put that into these songs without fully becoming that.

Weajue: How does geography or your physical environment feed into that relationship with noise right now?

Graham: Honestly, it might be as simple as not wanting to be alone with my thoughts. I'm the type of person who puts on a YouTube video while brushing his teeth. I like to be consumed by stuff. That might tie into the maximalism — I get antsy if I'm not hearing something.

Graham: My friend who repairs synthesizers told me something once about how in the early days of humanity, people's ears were finely tuned to tiny sounds as a survival mechanism — and he was saying that translates into how we listen to music today. Your brain can subconsciously pick up on almost imperceptible sounds because of this evolutionary thread. I think about that a lot. Humans have really tuned ears and we don't always realize it.

Weajue: That makes me think about how passive I am when I listen sometimes. Unless I'm actively pulling my attention toward the layers happening in the background, it all goes over my head.

Weadee: There's that story about dropping a book versus dropping a coin on a New York street — nobody turns around for the book, but everyone looks for the coin. It's about what your ears are actually tuned to listen for.

Weajue: Track one feels like a strange responsibility — it has to introduce the whole record. Was this the first song that felt final to you?

Graham: It might have been one of the last songs I made for the album, actually. I have a pretty non-linear process — I have a home studio so I'm not on anyone's clock. I generally don't have any songs written before I start. I'll just make twenty things and then figure out which ten are the best.

Graham: That song was just something I made one night — a stripped-back piano ballad. I showed it to my friend and roommate Elliot, who's an incredible musician and plays in my band. I showed it to him kind of offhand and he said, this would be crazy as the first song on the album. I had been thinking of it as an interlude. But he pointed out that you say the album title in the song — imagine that being the very first thing people hear, this bare piano moment, before the record goes full maximalist. He convinced me, and of course I ended up adding the noise at the start and the build at the end. But it came from that conversation.

Weajue: It's one of my favorite moments on the album. Because of how the rupture hits — so abruptly, right at the beginning.

Graham: I wanted to start the album with something abrasive, like — boom, you're in it.

Weadee: Like it's already been happening and you're only just opening the door to it now. Is there something this song does that nothing else on the record does?

Graham: It's the only real piano-focused song on the record, which I think of more as a guitar album. And it has more space than anything else on it. That space is what allowed the noise at the start to land — the juxtaposition of something abrasive and then silence, and then just piano and vocals. The original demo also ended in an open-ended way, which let me build that synth transition into the next track.

Weajue: The way "Enything" holds itself up while everything seems to be collapsing in on it — I wonder if that excess weight is also something emotional for you. What was the starting point for that one?

Graham: "I Heard That Noise" was one of the last songs I made, but "Enything" was one of the earliest. It predates the idea of an acoustic album entirely — I was going to make an indie rock record at that point. That song was built from a different era of me, but it still felt like it fit.

Graham: It was also the most difficult song to make. I remade almost every part of it over months. The original demo was probably from late 2022 or 2023. The biggest challenge was the drums — I redid them five different times, and I'm not a drummer. The project file got so big I had to get a new laptop just to open it. It was genuinely hell. But once I added the bridge section — the synth-y part between the second verse and the final chorus — that's when it finally clicked.

Weadee: There's so much going into it, literally and emotionally. What parts of yourself do you feel like you left in that song?

Graham: A lot of it is autobiographical. I went through a difficult relationship — classic stuff. But looking back on songs like "Enything" I'm in such a different place now that at a certain point I detach from it almost completely, like I didn't even write it. It's three years old at this point. It's like seeing a photo of yourself at seventeen and thinking, that's me? I don't even remember looking like that. It's all just music from a time and a place.

Graham: Given how many times I had to go back to that song and rework it, there are moments where, since I'm so far from that version of myself, it can feel embarrassing. Like — what were you tripping about? If only you knew it was going to get so much better. But for my own sake I have to disconnect from that and just be like, this is a song, I have to finish it, it's a good song. And just get it done.

Weadee: My sister and I have been doing a lot of writing and some of it covers the same messy territory. I remember sitting there one night telling myself — I have to type everything that's on my mind right now because in two years I won't feel this way, and then I won't be able to access it. So I get everything down, and then I can figure out what to do with it later.

Graham: Totally. I mean, think about Fleetwood Mac — they were all writing songs about hating each other. I'm sure when they listen back it's just like, wow, what a crazy time. It's all just footnotes in the story.

Weadee: The imagery you use feels sharp — it sticks and conjures things you maybe weren't intending. And you've said you don't naturally gravitate toward lyric writing. What does your process for getting comfortable with lyrics look like, and where did "Take It From Me" start?

Graham: I hate writing lyrics. I value them and I'm proud of mine, but it doesn't come naturally the way the instrumental side does. At some point during this album process I realized the easiest thing is to just write exactly what I'm feeling right now. I'm trying to move away from that a bit for the next thing — get a little more abstract. But this record is pretty cut and dry.

Graham: "Take It From Me" is a collection of real events. I tried to keep it vague enough, but there is a narrative — this push and pull of trying to help someone who doesn't want to be helped. The first thing I had was the chorus melody, and I just heard the phrase in my head. Sometimes that happens — I'm singing a melody and a line just arrives. So I built the song around that. The first verse is from the other person's perspective, the second is mine — I don't feel like I'm in the right place either. And then the chorus is this maybe-higher-power voice saying, take it from me, you'll be fine.

Weajue: What do people tend to come to you for advice about?

Graham: I don't know that people ask me for advice that much. Maybe in the context of this song, it's more that I have advice but nobody wants to hear it. Or whoever this person is isn't receptive. So you're both at a standstill — I don't have all the answers, and they don't want to hear what I have to say.

Weadee: What's a skill you're still a beginner at?

Graham: So much. I have a problem where I get really invested in things I care about and completely neglect the things I should care about — like self-care, basic adult functioning. All I want to do is make music and hang out with my girlfriend. If I could do only those two things forever, that would be a perfect life. But actually living a balanced adult life, doing the dishes, cleaning up after yourself — I'm totally a beginner at that. I'm still learning that you can't just go downstairs and make music all day.

Weadee: Your frontal lobe is fully developed at 25. Did anything click?

Graham: We'll see. I think I still have a lot of soul searching to do. Living with my girlfriend has been a more recent thing and I've had to learn that there's a checklist of things you have to do before the fun stuff. I'm learning to be a good partner and roommate. I'm basically a seven-year-old who just wants to play all day. Maybe that's starting to click. Remains to be seen.

Weadee: Houses and rooms show up all over your music. What does a home mean to you — for your music, and for yourself?

Graham: Initially in the songs I used houses and rooms as atmosphere — to put you in a physical place in the song. It's a good narrative tool, just saying: this is where I am right now, we're in the room.

Graham: In the case of "This House" specifically, it's not really about an actual house. I see it as building a space for someone — these people lived there, it was a happy house, and then it becomes derelict and abandoned. But you keep wanting to come back to it and hoping that person will see the beauty in it again. It's pretty sad when I think about it like that.

Graham: As far as the music itself — I think a lot about the physical room I work in, because I make everything there. I have a history of having studios in basements. My last studio where I made this whole album had no windows, a disgusting red carpet, and one of those knockdown ceilings you see in dentist offices. It was a genuinely liminal, off-kilter space. Probably haunted. I think that comes through in the music.

Weadee: I think I saw it in one of your videos — it was kind of unnerving.

Graham: It had a lot of mojo. It was also a boy house, so there was just, you know — food in the corner. Kind of a trap house situation. But it informed the music in some broad way, I think.

Weajue: I was watching an Alex O'Connor video where he asked: if you knew the world would end the day after you died, would you still make music? I'm asking because there's a line near the end of the record — "nothing lost, nothing gained" — and it felt sad. Existential, maybe. Would you keep making music?

Graham: Yeah, I think so. Music is how I comfort myself. It's what I do to calm down. I feel really lucky that it's also my job. I have months where I think I need to quit and work in an office, but making music is just how I process everything. I don't think I could stop under any circumstances. Though maybe if I were actually faced with that reality I'd feel differently. Right now, in theory — yes.

Weadee: Do you actually believe "nothing lost, nothing gained"? Do you hold that true to your core?

Graham: In certain situations, yes. Especially looking back on the era of my life this album covers — I did gain a lot. I learned things I never want to experience again, but I learned them. Hard-earned lessons. And sometimes it's just comforting to say: that was what it was. Nothing lost, nothing gained. It's over. I'm here now. If nothing matters, everything matters — that type of thing.

Weajue: This is probably my favorite track you've ever put out. I'll give you space to talk about it.

Graham: Thank you. That one was fun to make. There's the obvious joke about the angsty white kid who punches walls — but what actually happened is I was in the studio one day, looked up at the knockdown ceiling, and just thought: why would they do this? Why not just a normal ceiling? And I put my fist through it. It went straight through because it's made of nothing.

Graham: The logical response would've been to be like, oh no. Instead I called Elliot and said, bro, you have to come try this. And then we were just down there going at the ceiling together. Of course afterward I was like — the security deposit. But I don't live there anymore, so.

Graham: The image was just funny to me. The angst of it. I thought "I punched through the ceiling" didn't quite work as a title, so I did take a small creative liberty.

Weadee: We grant you grace for that.

Weajue: I love it because it feels like an emotional metaphor — punching through the wall of everything you've put up between yourself and something, only to find there's nothing on the other side either.

Graham: And it really did feel like nothing when I did it. The ceiling is so thin.

Weajue: What's the longest piece of music you've willingly sat with?

Graham: There was a song I got really into in high school by Nils Frahm — "Says." When I first started smoking weed at sixteen I'd just sit in my room and let it wash over me. I'd tell my friends, wait till the end, the end is crazy. Maybe that's where it started. Or something like "A Day in the Life" — the Beatles songs that just build endlessly. I liked that concept. Honestly though, I mostly listen to music while driving. That's the one context where I'll give myself space to sit with a long song.

Weajue: You said most tracks on this record are in the two-and-a-half to three-and-a-half minute range. Why go to nine and a half minutes to close?

Graham: I just wanted to make a really long song. I knew it wasn't going to be the one that lands on a Spotify playlist. But I wanted to go out on something big.

Graham: It's actually two songs fused into one. The original "You Are" demo was just the first part. Then in 2022 or 2023, me and what became my band — at the time just my best friends — packed a van, drove out to Joshua Tree, rented an Airbnb and made music for two weeks. I'd gotten some label money and thought, let's do it. The long instrumental section in the second half came from that session.

Graham: Toward the end of the album process I was going through everything really late one night and realized the "You Are" demo and the Joshua Tree song were in the same key. And I just thought — I can make this work. So I added the ambient middle section that bridges them. Two songs, one track.

Weadee: The second half almost didn't make it. Is there another song that didn't make the record that you'd want to give a shout out to?

Graham: I shot myself in the foot because I go live on Instagram and just play everything I've ever made. So people come up to me at shows asking when I'm going to release something I played casually online, and I'm like — well, you already know all the words. Takes the magic out of it. But there's one called "White Ribs" that I really wanted to fit into this album. It's a bit too ambient, didn't sit right in the sonic world of the record. Maybe one day.

Weajue: This record is one of the top highlights of my year. Thank you for putting it out despite everything.

Graham: Thank you. The Toronto show was so fun — I'm glad you were both there. We all knew it was going to be the last show of the tour. And at the end when we played "You Are," my keyboard just stopped working. I just didn't care. I was like, I'm going home anyway. Might as well.

Weajue: I was having a spiritual experience over there. It was incredible.

Graham: I ran out of money, basically. I literally couldn't sustain it anymore. But it was a good run. CLOSING

Graham: Thank you so much for having me. I hope you do this show for a million years.

Weadee: Until the sun explodes.

Graham: I'll leave it at this: I hope the world never ends.