Spotlight On... Both Hands

Hailey Beavis and Brian Pokora have both been under our spotlight before – Beavis for the solo album she self-released with labelmate Faith Eliott on OK Pal Records, and Pokora as one half of synth-pop duo Slim Wrist – but their new creative partnership Both Hands is well worth shouting about. Pokora's dreamy and effervescent dance tracks, with Beavis' confessional lyricism and vocal performance, is a match made in heaven.

Singles Sea Spray and Lips Parted have already heralded their first album, Be Like a Mountain In a Moonlit Way, due for release later in the year on 18 September – we caught up with the duo ahead of a set at the next installment of the Cowgate Block Party in Edinburgh and a show as part of the Commonwealth Games celebrations in Glasgow to find out more.

You've both had some experience on the Scottish music scene already – Hailey with OK Pal Records and Brian with Slim Wrist. How did the two of you come together, and where did the name Both Hands come from?
Hailey Beavis: Brian and I had been vague acquaintances for many years prior to Both Hands, and fans of each others' respective projects. But it wasn't until a mutual friend (Tallah Brash – Music Editor of this very publication) mentioned to me that Brian’s band had just disbanded that I did the only respectable thing one must do, and slid directly into his DMs with something like, “sorry to hear your band broke up, want to start a band?”

For the longest time, I dreamed of putting down the guitar and creating fun, synth-heavy music made for dancing. The moment we started working together, it felt completely collaborative and, importantly, like something new. We’ve both reached a place in our musical journeys where we’re ready to explore and take a few risks. Being in a duo is lovely because you get to both match and push against the other person creatively, and that tension can lead you somewhere you’d never get to on your own.

We spent the first couple of months grappling with a band name and either not quite agreeing, or loving something only to discover it was already taken by some teenage grunge band from Milwaukee. Then we began generating band names each day using a cut-up technique until we could both agree on one. We soon landed on Both Hands. We were looking for a name that felt like a true collaboration, and Both Hands seemed to capture that.

The first single off your new album was Sea Spray, an empowering, atmospheric dance hit about how partying creates protection from the troubles we face in our day-to-day lives. It seems like we've all had a rough couple years and that kind of attitude has never been more needed. When you were writing/recording, how did you manage to keep that sense of escape and euphoria close to the forefront?
HB: A lot of the lyrics came directly from the experiences we shared while getting to know one another – through rehearsals, gigs, festivals, parties, long conversations, and all the blur and noise that surrounded that period of our lives. Somewhere within all of that, something really potent began forming in our shared sound. Brian connected deeply with my lyrics because they reflected experiences he was also trying to process himself, and in turn he would create these beautiful, textural demos that made melodies and lyrics come incredibly naturally to me. The songs became a way for both of us to work through what we were experiencing emotionally, and we poured that honesty and energy straight into our live shows. As our friendship deepened, the songwriting became increasingly fluid and instinctive.

I recorded the vocals in bursts throughout 2024 with producer and engineer Robyn Dawson, all while pregnant. The album was then mixed over several months at Knockwood Studio, often in short sessions while I was either heavily pregnant or sitting in the control room with a newborn baby beside us.

Shortly after my baby was born, I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, which brought a whole new set of challenges in the months that followed. Through everything, the band has had a genuinely healing quality for both of us, and even in such a short space of time, it feels like we’ve already been through so much together.

The new single, released earlier this week, is called Lips Parted, which you describe as your "contribution to pop music's rich pantheon of songs about fucking." Were there any particular big influences on this track?
Brian Pokora: The biggest specific influence I can think of on this track is actually the drums. I’m a huge fan of Vegyn and Headache’s records, and I think their drum programming is absolutely top-tier. I wanted to bring some of that energy into the track, those occasional broken beats and reversed drum hits that can subtly destabilise things and keep the momentum shifting underneath you.

The overall idea with Lips Parted was to strike a balance between the discombobulating, stabby arpeggios and the slightly wonky synth solo. I wanted it to feel buttery smooth on one hand, but also as though it might fall apart at any second.

Your upcoming album Be Like a Mountain In a Moonlit Way is very textured, opening and closing with darker, more forbidding tracks, but containing these glittering, uplifting beats like Sea Spray and Lips Parted. Did you have a clear idea of the journey you wanted to take listeners on before you got in the studio, or was intuition a bigger part of the process?
BP: The track order and overall arc of the album were very carefully considered. As a debut record, we wanted it to showcase the full range of what Both Hands can be. Most of the tracks started as small ideas that we bounced back and forth until they snowballed into fully formed songs. I might be sitting at home in Ableton, messing around with synths and looking for something interesting, then stumble across an idea and immediately think, “Hailey would like this.” Usually I’ll just record it straight out of the speakers and send it over on WhatsApp. Not to brag, but I think I’m right about 95% of the time when it comes to knowing whether something feels like Both Hands, so clearly there’s some good intuition at work there.

We’ve always let the songs go wherever they wanted to go creatively, but we tend to become more deliberate once we reach the mixing stage. Sometimes it’s in those final edits that we start making connections between tracks. We might realise we used a particular synth sound on Sea Spray and decide to weave it into Lips Parted as well, creating another thread running through the record. That was something we worked on closely with Jolon Yeoman at Knockwood. For the next record, we might start thinking more conceptually at an earlier stage, but we’ll have to see what feels natural.

It seems like performance art is a big part of Both Hands shows, and there's a real aesthetic quality to your previous projects. What can audiences expect from one of your gigs, and what ideas are you trying to convey on stage?
HB: This is something I ask myself regularly, haha. As a performer, I’m really interested in the idea of embodiment and inhabiting a song’s meanings as much as its textures, sounds and melodies. Through movement, costume, and a lot of play, I tend to follow instinct on stage and experiment in real time. There’s also a strong sense of invitation in the work – a willingness to expose and share what I know and feel, asking the audience to receive it and engage with it in whatever way feels right. I think this is why it has to keep changing. It doesn't make sense to try and pin it down.

You can usually expect some homemade props and costumes, the scale of which honestly depends on whether we took the car to the gig or got the bus. There may also be a bit of writhing around on the floor or some such grubby malarky

We always wrap things up by asking what's on the horizon. Are there upcoming Both Hands projects you'd like to tease, or are there any gigs you'd like to shout out?
BP: We’ve got a few big ones coming up over the summer. On 18 July we’re playing Cowgate Block Party in Edinburgh, which has a stacked lineup including one of our favourites, Nick Dow. Then on 31 July we’ll be in Glasgow as part of the Commonwealth Games celebrations, sharing a bill with Hot Chip (DJs), The Bug Club, and big boss Pictish Trail, which we’re incredibly excited about.

We’ve also got something quite special in the works for the album launch this autumn, but we’ll keep that under wraps for now.

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Lips Parted is out now via Lost Map Records; Be Like a Mountain In a Moonlit Way is due on 18 Sep via Lost Map Records
Both Hands play Cowgate Block Party, Edinburgh, 18 July; Lost Map Summer Party, SWG3, Glasgow, 31 Jul

Follow Both Hands on Instagram @bothhands_music