Chicago – Have you ever encountered someone and instantly knew they were something special? That’s precisely what happened when Sima Cunningham heard Macie Stewart sing at a high school play. Cunningham immediately told her brother Liam, who was at the time forming a band, that he needed to make music with Stewart. And he did. Together the two, along with several friends, including Vic Mensa and Nico Segal aka Donnie Trumpet, formed hip hop group Kids These Days, and after KTD dismantled, they went on to create indie rock band Marrow.
Of course, during that time, Sima Cunningham and Macie Stewart became friends and Cunningham became known for her work as a solo artist, but it wasn’t until 2013 that the two properly collaborated as musicians – they both have toured together as back up singers for their good friend Chance The Rapper. Together these two talented multi-instrumentalists, who both have become known as two of the best keyboardists around town, form HOMME. That’s pronounced “ohm,” which means “man,” in French.
With HOMME, Stewart and Cunningham have walked away from the keys, instead stepping out of their comfort zones, picking up guitars and pushing the boundaries with stunning vocal arrangements. The duo has been compared to PJ Harvey and St. Vincent and described as both art-rock and indie-rock, but at times HOMME touches upon psychedelia and even traditional Irish folk music. Last year HOMME released its self-titled debut EP, and the duo is currently working on a full-length, that’s largely been inspired by free-improvisation.
Best New Bands sat down with Sima Cunningham and Macie Stewart in Logan Square, where the Chicago natives now reside. Over coffee, we chatted about their upcoming performance at Pitchfork Music Festival, how growing up and living in Chicago influences their music, and how experimenting with HOMME has changed them as artists.
At what point did you guys begin collaborating?
Macie Stewart: I sang backup a bunch for Sima, I guess starting when [she] moved back to Chicago, from New York. It was a few years ago.
Sima Cunningham: The end of 2013, basically.
Macie Stewart: Yeah, and then we also both sang backup for Chance and were like, ‘You know what, let’s make this a thing!’ [laughs] Because we both wanted to play guitar more, in a band, and make noise, but we also wanted a way to have our voices together, again.
Homme operates under the notion of less is more. Sima, in an interview with Chicago Tribune, you said, “We wanted to give ourselves the bare bones instead of tools, which can be a challenge, but it forces us to look at the music in its most bare sense and be creative in how we get from point A to point B.” What are some examples of how that approach shaped the album or certain songs?
Macie Stewart: Yeah, we tried to – well first of all, it’s just two guitars and two voices. Sima’s a little better at guitar than I am. Well, I’ve been practicing. [everyone laughs] But yeah, we wanted to stick with that as our main expression for this band, so I guess that’s like the bare bones thing that we wanted to just use this one instrument, that maybe we don’t have all of the technical ability for, and see what we can create with it. For the album, we tried to stick a lot with guitar – although, there are some keys on it – but we just used us two on the record. We’re the only ones playing the instruments on the album, so that was our restriction: we wanted it to just be us – aside from one track.
Sima Cunningham: I think that part of it is that in our music career, our main instrument has been keyboards, and with keyboards, particularly when you’re proficient in them, you can do a lot of stuff. With both hands, you can cover a lot of territory, and there’s so many sounds you can get. In a way, if you can play keyboards, you can achieve any sound that you want, with immediacies. Really quickly you can get that, but I think that by forcing ourselves to mainly compose with guitar – when it comes to recording, we expand our instrumental pallet a bit. We both played drums and bass on the album. Macie plays strings and there’s some keyboards on there, too – but when it came to composing the songs and finding the arrangements for them, we really limited ourselves to guitars because it forces us to come up with creative ways to fill out a part…
Macie Stewart: To achieve the things we hear in our heads.
Sima Cunningham: Yeah, and that is what is really organically creating the sound, us having limited ourselves in that way.
Having gone out of your comfort zones, using guitars instead of keyboards, what would you say you’ve learned about yourselves not just as musicians, but also simply as human beings, from pushing the boundaries?
Macie Stewart: That’s a good question. Hmm. What have I learned about myself?
No pressure! [everyone laughs]
Macie Stewart: Well, I think we learned that we’re maybe a little more fearless than we thought we were. [laughs] I was watching an old show that we did, that was recorded, and I was like, ‘Oh my God! That sounds like we don’t know how to play the guitar!’ But you know, we were just unafraid to go for it and do it and make music.
Sima Cunningham: Yeah, I think that a lot of the confidence that founded the band is that we knew that we are musicians and we wanted to put a different challenge in front of ourselves. And at first, I think it was very intimidating because the nature of the band is very exposed, very vulnerable in front of an audience.
Macie Stewart: You can hear every little detail.
Sima Cunningham: You can hear everything. So at first it was quite a feat, and I think [Macie] is right; we developed a fearlessness through this band, kind of by necessity. Also, I think this band started because we were really enjoying doing this thing together, and people thought we should perform in front of people. People really enjoyed it. So it was this natural evolution of bringing this thing that was fun for the two of us, that felt like an experiment, bringing it to an audience, and finding that the audience also enjoyed that playfulness and that leap of – I don’t want to say faith but idea that we were asking them to participate in. I think we both learned that we enjoy going for it, out there on stage.
Your EP also showcases your vocal ranges and plays with harmonies, making your voices equally as powerful an instrument as your guitars, especially in “Fingerprints.” Were there particular artists who inspired you to treat your vocals more as an instrument? I feel weird saying that because your vocals are an instrument, but sometimes they can be pushed to the background, getting less attention, where you guys are showcasing them.
Sima Cunningham: Immediately Kate Bush comes to mind because we were listening to The Dreaming a lot, and we were playing one of her songs – “There Goes a Tenner” – and she has a part in the song [sings the part of the song] – she really jumped around a lot in this cool way. I think David Bowie is also a big vocal influence on us, too.
Macie Stewart: He’s another person who just goes for it. Maybe he can’t always reach all of the notes, but with such conviction, he goes for it.
Sima Cunningham: He’s really dynamic and expressive, which is what we really wanted to do because the other main instrument in HOMME is our voices. It’s an instrument. We want to use it that way. We want to create textures, create sounds, and create parts of arrangements that are with our voices. I think people who play with that a lot, who aren’t necessarily talking and singing or just more directly singing lines, but people who flip between using the voice as a means to carry a vocal melody and lyrics and then using it to create another texture.
Macie Stewart: We could also say Dirty Projectors, especially with the hocketing thing… Probably the first time we heard hocketing was with the Dirty Projectors. That’s something that has stuck with us as a vocal technique, especially using our voices as instruments.
“Woman” is haunting and mysterious, and so is the music video. Will you discuss the making of the music video? How much input did you have in its making?
Macie Stewart: Our friend Maren Celest is a creative genius. She can do everything. We told her we wanted to make a video with her because we love all of her work – she took our [promo] photos, as well. We told her, ‘We love your eye, and whatever you want to do, we’re going to follow along!’ She came up with a few ideas, and we whittled it down to the main things that we wanted to have in the video. We also wanted it to be more image based rather than a storyline.
Sima Cunningham: We really trust her. It’s really great to collaborate with people who you trust because it allows you to…
Macie Stewart: Let go.
Sima Cunningham: And go along with their vision, rather than having to push and pull… We filmed all the pool stuff at my grade school… I called them up and asked if we could jump in their pool. It was really fun. It was just me, Macie, Maren, and my friend Lydia, and we unraveled all this video tape, wrapped it around our arms, and then jumped in.
Macie Stewart: In all our clothes. [laughs]
Sima Cunningham: And danced around. It was funny because it was bringing back memories of being a kid, like water ballet time! [laughs] And lots of underwater tea parties. [laughs] Macie and I had to stay at the bottom and interact with each other without floating to the top, which is really difficult.
You both grew up in Chicago, which is rare for many Chicago artists. How has Chicago influenced you as people and musicians?
Macie Stewart: Chicago has a very down-to-earth music scene, which I think is a great and unique thing. It’s definitely kept us grounded, in a way. [laughs]
Sima Cunningham: Yeah, I think that a lot of Chicago musicians operate on this really good work ethic. I think that’s what everyone has here. We spend a fair amount of time interacting with musicians that are a generation, one, two, and even three generations ahead of us, and all of them work really hard. Everyone is really hard working, and everyone is really honest here. Like, ‘Nah, that doesn’t sound good. That’s not a cool thing. You shouldn’t do that.’ [everyone laughs] That’s actually really helpful. I really appreciate that. I don’t want to talk trash on any other cities, but I do think there are a lot of other places where smoke is blown up people’s asses. Like, ‘Well, you look great, so we’ll make it work. We’ll get the right team of people around you, and it will come together.’ Here in Chicago I find that…
Macie Stewart: You have to do it all yourself. [laughs]
Sima Cunningham: Yeah, you have to do it all yourself. At least at first, you really have to hustle, and because there’s such a strong musician community, people are going to react to the music first and foremost. It’s not like you’ll become Instagram famous because you’re a fashion star and then people are like ‘Oh yeah, great music.’ No, people are going to come to your shows at the little clubs first.
Macie Stewart: What I think is so great about the Chicago scene, too, is that any show that you go to, you’re going to see somebody else. Everybody goes to each other’s shows and is really supportive of all the musicians and the community. It’s a cool scene to be a part of.
Sima Cunningham: Yeah, the network in Chicago, you can see it – it’s sort of like a necklace or a chain – more than any other cities. I lived in New York. There are some great clubs in New York and some great musicians in New York, but they are all pretty scattered around the city. This one musician goes to this one club. I haven’t lived there in awhile, but in L.A. it seems like it’s all over the place. There’s not like a super strong cohesion of people who all know each other, but in Chicago it’s like…
Macie Stewart: Very interconnected.
Sima Cunningham: Which is great! It means that there’s that much stronger solidarity of ‘Let’s make music’ and not ‘Let’s blow up this scene.’ Everyone is super into working really hard to make cool music and challenge each other to make it worth while.
Macie Stewart: And it’s not genre based either. Everyone plays every type of music.
There’s defiantly a lot of blending here. I hate categorizing music, but when you write about music, you’re forced to. For so many bands here, it’s like, ‘Well, it’s a little bit of this and a little bit of that.’ I even noticed that in you guys. Some people categorized you as art-rock and then indie-rock, but when I was listening there’s plenty of psychedelic moments in your music. It’s just everywhere.
Sima Cunningham: There’s Irish!
Macie Stewart: We got some Irish fiddle in there!
Did you grow up listening to that?
Sima Cunningham: Both of us did.
Macie Stewart: I played Irish music for a really long time. Irish fiddle. It was really fun!
Sima Cunningham: I grew up playing the tin whistle with my dad.
Being from Chicago, it also must be extra special and exciting to be playing Pitchfork. I know you’ve played before with other bands, but this is your first time playing with HOMME. What are looking forward to? How are you feeling?
Sima Cunningham: I think we’re really excited. We’ve been having rehearsals. We have a special addition to our set. I think we’re enjoying putting together a really solid chuck of music and having it be really energetic. That’s really exciting for us. I like that this band always feels really energetic and fun. So, we’re really excited to play, and we’re playing right after Sun Ra Arkestra, which is…
Macie Stewart: Like, ‘Oh my God!’ [laughs] So pumped about Sun Ra!
Who else are you looking forward to seeing? Will you be there all weekend?
Sima Cunningham: Yeah! Macie is playing with Whitney, who are our friends.
Macie Stewart: I put together a string quartet for them, to play along.
Sima Cunningham: Miss Macie, the conductor.
Macie Stewart: I’m going to wear my coattails. [laughs] But yeah, I’m looking forward to…
Sima Cunningham: Sufjan! I’ve loved him forever, so I’m really excited about that!
Macie Stewart: I’m looking forward to Anderson .Paak, actually. Who else? This line-up is my favorite!
Sima Cunningham: I actually want to see one or two Carly Rae songs.
Macie Stewart: I want to see Carly Rae, too. [laughs]
Sima Cunningham: I heard her band is really good, as well. I obviously want to see Brian Wilson.
Macie Stewart: Oh yeah, of course. Pet Sounds!
Sima Cunningham: I want to see Twin Peaks. I’m excited to see Twin Peaks. And Shamir!
We’re excited to see HOMME at Pitchfork! Homme plays the Blue Stage on Sunday, from 2:50-3:30 p.m. See what other acts we’re excited to see in “10 New Bands to See at Pitchfork 2016.” Follow HOMME on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Follow Best New Bands on Facebook and Twitter, too. Stay tuned for our daily 2016 Pitchfork Music Festival coverage!
Photo by Sarah Hess for Best New Bands.
Sarah Hess
After attending The School of the Art Institute in Chicago, Sarah went on to study education at Dominican University, earning a degree in history. When not teaching, writing, or taking in a show, she is most likely to be found with a camera to her eye or hanging out in a darkroom.
You can follow Sarah Hess on twitter at @Sarahhasanh and view her music photography on her website: smhimaging.com.
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