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Aug 24, 2023 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Maren Celest

Indie pop due maeve & quinn is the project of twin sisters Maris and Bryce O’Tierney. The pair debuted with their 2018 EP, Something Overhead, Something Overhead, followed by their sophomore EP, Star-Crossed in 2021, introducing their thoughtful songwriting, layered harmonies, and expansive instrumental arrangements, verging at once on folk, art pop, and indie rock.

This year, the pair returned with a series of new singles, teasing their forthcoming debut LP, Another Door. Today, they’re back with the fourth single from the project, “I Know I Will,” premiering early with Under the Radar.

“I Know I Will” finds the pair reflecting on love and longing, exploring the space after a romance has ended but before you are able to move on. They open the track in a sparse, confessional mode, guided by a lone guitar line. As the song builds, the instrumentation moves between these spacious moments and a driving, resolute chorus, colored by melodic piano lines and crescendoing drums. The lyrics reflect this same tension, with the pair confessing, “I’m not sorry that I’m on my own / The sky is clear / But my memory has a memory / That brings me back to you / And my memory has a memory / And I don’t know what’s true.”

Check out the song below. Another Door is out everywhere on September 8th. You can also read our Q&A with the band below and follow them here.

You’ve made music all across the globe (Anchorage, Dublin, Chicago) have you found that different surroundings influence your music in different ways?

Relating to place is at the heart of how we see our music-making as relational. We refer often to a ground of being, the way there’s an ecology in people and also in sound and songwriting.

In terms of physical landscape, the expansiveness of where we grew up, in Anchorage, Alaska, is always an influence. This is a region of immense scale and dynamic contrasts—mountains, ocean, the smallness of humans in comparison—that inspires our risk-taking through improvisation and instrumentation. And we were brought up in a community of musicians that guided our rigorous training in classical music, the technical vocabulary of which has allowed us to explore and experiment across genres.

Dublin, Ireland, is a homeplace of cultural heritage on our Dad’s side. The musical community there reflects a kind of big-city/port-town perspective. The storytelling and music, particular to emotional lyricism and rhythmic patterns, are so embedded in the Irish culture from ancient to contemporary times, and find their way into our songs.

And Chicago has been a pivotal milieu for the expansion of our collaboration. It’s where we wrote and recorded the songs of our new album Another Door, and where we’ve established our musical performance base. The city is so rich in a spectrum of genres and cross-pollination between them. Our music draws multi-directionally from this space – we move toward genre and style that best expresses the stories we want to tell, and being in the Chicago music community has been an affirming place to explore. Additionally, collaboration across artistic mediums has invigorated our practice. In Chicago, we’ve performed programs of our poetry in recitation, storytelling, and songs & instrumental music at the Poetry Foundation, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and Steppenwolf Theatre. We’ve also premiered orchestral compositions of ours with the Chicago Composers Orchestra and the Anchorage (Alaska) Symphony Orchestra. Being in conversation with other artistic communities and organizations—particularly around issues we care about - climate change, mental health, family lineage and inheritances, sense of place & self, womanhood—has been and is an integral part of our performance craft and career.

The two of you are twins, so obviously you share a lot in common, but in what ways do you differ with your musical instinct? How does it affect your collaboration?

As we’ve grown in our relationship as twin sisters, including more deeply understanding each other’s differences, we’ve been able to take even more risks together musically and play to each other’s unique strengths. We’re in sync such that we might each bring a verse to the table when improvising musically, and discover an unexpected story that emerges from that intersection. As a published poet who often begins with words on the page, Bryce has a keen eye for editing ideas toward image or emotion— the way a poem is its own best summary! To her piano-playing and singing, she also brings the sensibility, tonal and textural nuance of the violin, her primary instrument. Maris’ musical and lyrical process most often starts in relation to playing with the guitar, so the shapes of the language can be more percussive and accented relative to that rhythm instrument. There’s definitely a cool push and pull in our songs through the rhythmic interplay, which feels to characterize how we are two individuals that have a shared understanding.

“I Know I Will” has a very powerful, instrumental ending, where did that idea come from?

The genesis of the song was in fact a free improvisation (Maris on electric guitar; Bryce on piano), in June 2020 after dinner in our shared Chicago apartment. The ending/outro of “I Know I Will” emerged as salient material from that improv, providing an emotional arrival or outsetting, to work backwards from in a way. For us, the outro is interwoven with the song’s primary theme of reclaiming a sense of being at peace with oneself, with or without a significant other. The expanse of the instrumental comes out of the previous section where we trade the mantra-like vocal line, “…on the outside / I know I will,” which encourages an outward show of courage, a faith that you’ll heal, even as the heart is still catching up.

What music were you two listening to during the creation of Another Door? Were there any specific references or touchstones?

Between us we listened to quite a range of artists and across genres. Among others, Bryce was listening to Bat For Lashes’ album Lost Girls, as well as band The National, and Joni Mitchell; qualities of atmospheric play, rhythmic complexity, and candid delivery feel true as influences. For Maris, Kate Bush and Big Thief were on heavy rotation. Bush for inspirations of sonic landscape and world-building through lyrics; Big Thief for instrumental jams (various moments from our Another Door single “Stuck Inside” as one example). And for us both, HAIM for those sister blood harmonies and bold unison singing, and Irish supergroup The Gloaming for musical lyricism and improvisation. On the classical side of things, Arvo Pärt and Rachmaninoff, for ways of varying instrumental texture and color.