About this artist
Taking inspiration from filmmakers, electronic artists, and folksingers alike, Hilary Woods crafts intimate, nocturnal keyboard-based songs and noise experiments as a solo artist. After scoring two Top 20 albums as the bassist for Irish indie rock band JJ72 in the early 2000s, she quit the music business, re-emerging in 2014 with her gentler if dissonant soundscapes. Woods made her full-length solo debut with Colt in 2018.
A native of Dublin, Woods was raised in a musical environment, with parents who played classical, folk, and rock LPs in the home, and who encouraged her and her brother to play instruments. Hilary’s main instrument was the piano.
In the late ’90s, the then-18-year-old joined singer/guitarist Mark Greaney and drummer Fergal Matthews in their band JJ72 as bass player. The indie rock group soon signed with Sony imprint Lakota Records and had two hit albums in the U.K. and Ireland with their 2000 eponymous debut and 2002′s I to Sky. After four years of persistent touring, Woods left the band — and the music industry — in 2002. A year later, she started a family.
Woods took some college courses while raising her daughter and felt her creativity sparked by filmmakers such as Wong Kar-wai and Chris Marker, whom she was exposed to in school. She eventually felt compelled to write music again, and began listening to different artists, including Jon Hopkins’ and Vincent Gallo’s electronic works. Woods returned in 2014 with a set of hushed acoustic songs on the EP Night. She started touring again and followed in 2016 with the lusher but still gentle Heartbox, which also incorporated spacy keys. Woods expanded upon that EP’s eerie electronic-acoustic atmosphere on her full-length solo debut, Colt. It was released by Sacred Bones Records in 2018. She pushed the boundaries still further on 2020′s Birthmarks, which experimented with murkier atmospheres and instrumental noise. ~ Marcy Donelson