Spotlight On... her picture

In a relatively short space of time, singer Anny Tahaney, bassist Catriona Reid and drummer Finlay Smith have racked up an impressive list of achievements as her picture. Featuring on BBC Introducing Scotland’s Ones to Watch list in 2023, this year they've been selected as part of Wide Days’ Talent Development Programme, and are set to release their second EP, Feed Me Hope, in June. 

Following on from recent singles Can't Think and Muscle Memory, and ahead of their appearace at Wide Days' New From Scotland showcase (La Belle Angele, Edinburgh, 1 May), her picture are currently gearing up to release Reasons I Tried. It's quite possibly their biggest, boldest and most atmospheric single yet, so ahead of its release on Friday 25 April, we catch up with Tahaney to find out more about the band, their latest single, inpspirations for the EP and what to expect from their showcase performance next.

Before launching as her picture in 2022, you made music together under the name Fauna. How did you originally meet, what inspired you to start making music together and what was the reason for hitting the reset button with her picture?
We originally met when we were 15/16 at a Music Education Programme called Behind the Noise, which gave school children the opportunity to understand the basics of gigging, the music industry and songwriting. Before the programme, we had all individually felt a bit creatively frustrated; Cat and I were in the classical sphere as cellists, and found the elitism/classism really demotivating and unfulfilling, so meeting Finlay during BTN and playing in a band setting for the first time felt so cathartic.

We knew from the beginning that we just clicked with each other in a creative sense, and there was a really special synergy in our tastes and approaches to songwriting, which is still there to this day. Since then, we’ve had the privilege of growing up writing together and, after the pandemic, we were leaving uni and faced with the decision of what we wanted to do with our lives, and we knew it had to be this. That prompted our rebrand, as it marked the transition between music being our childhood passion project and our adult career path. 

Musically, who would you cite as some of your inspirations and how do you manage to bring your three points of view to your sound?
Even though there’s often quite a distorted, heavy quality to our songs, we’re really inspired by music that has cinematic and atmospheric undertones; I think our sound sits in that space between the aggressive and the delicate, and playing with that contrast is something we naturally gravitate towards. Specifically, we’re inspired by the likes of Ethel Cain, Ben Howard, Daughter, Aurora, Bon Iver and Radiohead.

Thankfully, it’s always been easy to combine our three perspectives in writing sessions; we’re very lucky that we agree on almost everything and have very similar ideas, like a hivemind! We also have different strengths which is a massive bonus. For example, Finlay is a total tech whizz and is easily able to elevate Cat and I’s initial ideas with his production knowledge. We’re really settled in our songwriting process, which is a benefit of having worked together for so long. 

Your forthcoming EP is a concept record inspired by the Greek mythology of The Five Rivers of the Underworld. What was it about The Five Rivers of the Underworld that resonated with you so much?
Literary influences have always been something we’ve engaged with as a band; even our name is a reference to a Virginia Woolf book. It was Catriona that originally brought the concept to the table, having learned a bit about it during her dissertation research. We were attracted to the idea of using the myth as an allegory for Ego death and healing.

While writing the EP, we were all going through a really rough time mentally and, by using the motif of each river as a stimulus, we were able to chronicle our experience of what it was like to unpack repressed trauma, reestablish our relationships with ourselves and heal. Part of that for me personally was confronting how divorced I had become from my body as a coping mechanism and, funnily enough, the idea of the body being left behind before entering the Underworld is a huge part of the myth. It felt like our lived experiences and the lore blended together in such a serendipitous and seamless way. 

Your next single, Reasons I Tried, is an emotionally raw listen. Can you tell us more about the single and what it’s about?
Reasons I Tried was written in response to a really painful breakup that I was going through, one that left me feeling like a complete stranger and enemy to myself. At the time, I didn’t trust that I was a good person and was convinced that every trauma I had ever lived through had ruined me, turning me into something fundamentally broken and destructive. That self-loathing is such an apparent theme in the song, and you can hear me blaming myself for the failure of the relationship, while also simultaneously abandoning myself and refusing to show any self-compassion. I use a bit of body horror imagery to describe myself, like in the first two singles, which shows the depth of how distorted my sense of self was.

Writing this song helped me see that if you have a bad relationship with yourself, you’ll always feel like you’re the problem, accepting unfair treatment as a result. I’m anxious for people to hear such a vulnerable side to us but, at the end of the day, having a precarious sense of self is quite a common thing. I think it can be refreshing to address these struggles, especially for a listener who might be dealing with the same internal conflict that I was.

Unlike anything else you’ve released so far, is it a sign of things to come in the future from her picture, and can you let us in on what to expect from the rest of the Feed Me Hope?
We’ve always been passionate about experimenting with our sound as much as possible, and pushing ourselves to develop as songwriters, which I think this song really demonstrates. Given that the EP is a concept record, storytelling is at the heart of its curation, with each track sonically guiding the listener through a different stage of the healing process; from hate and anger, to despair and, finally, acceptance.

A lot of our creative decisions were informed by this idea of narration and world-building. For example, the opening track Styx’s Curse is meant to make the listener feel as though they are entering the underworld via the first river, as the shape of the melody evokes the movement of ferrying across the water, with the darkness of the underworld setting being conveyed in the chaos of the additional production. We’re so happy with the final product, and we hope our audience are too. 

You’re part of Wide Days’ Talent Development Programme this year, and are playing their New From Scotland showcase on 1 May. What can people expect on the night?
It’s such an honour to be a part of this year’s lineup, featuring alongside some of Scotland’s most exciting new talent! We take immense pride in our live shows, always aiming to deliver an impactful set and our showcase slot on 1 May will be no different. We’ll be performing some of our favourite tracks from both Don’t Try to Comfort Me and Feed Me Hope. We’re also incredibly excited to catch everyone else’s sets; it’s going to be an amazing night of Scottish music, guaranteed.

With the EP due out in June, do you have anything else planned for the rest of the year?
We’ll be announcing our biggest headline show to date very soon, as well as another more intimate EP-related event too. After the summer, we’ll be looking at quite a busy gig schedule, which will involve embarking on our first tour and branching our live circuit outside of Scotland. We’ll also be gearing up to release more new music at the end of the year, which we’ve already started the writing process for. It’s all very exciting!

Finally, can you let us in on a secret; is there anything about her picture that people might not know?
It seems to be a secret to people that, as individuals, we’re not as intense as our music! We’ve had a few funny interactions recently where people have been like, “Wow, you guys are such sweethearts, but your music is so heavy, I wasn’t expecting that.” So yeah, I think that seems to surprise our listeners for sure. We promise we’re nice and approachable, please say hi!!

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Reasons I Tried is released on 25 Apr; Feed Me Hope is set for release on 20 Jun

her picture play Wide Days' New From Scotland Showcase, La Belle Angele, Edinburgh, 1 May

Follow her picture on Instagram at @herpictureband