Monica and Johnny’s partnership seems to be quite harmonious: even though in her career Monica has performed with many artists, she feels at one with Johnny, “I love what he brought to the records,” she claims, “I really couldn’t see myself wanting or needing to go off and working with other people. When I’m invited to sing on somebody’s record I take up the invitation of course, like it recently happened with James Grant: he is a wonderful person and we’ve become good friends, we meet up every now and then and share the philosophies of life, our loves and losses and disappointments.” Apart from singing the beautiful ‘A Tale Best Forgotten’ on Grant’s “I Shot the Albatross”, Monica also appeared on his latest “Holy Love” and performed during his gigs. “James must be admired because he recognised that Monica would have been better to sing ‘A Tale Best Forgotten’, which is one of the best tracks he has ever written: there aren’t many people out there willing to sacrifice their own ego for the sake of making music,” Johnny states, “in the same way, Belle & Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch, a great artist and a genius in himself, like James, recognised that Monica was good enough to fulfil the role of singer on ‘Lazy Line Painter Jane’.”

There is something, though, on which Monica and Johnny disagree and that’s their favourite song on “Return of the Sacred Heart”: if Johnny claims it’s the title track, Monica is for ‘Déjà vu’. “Vocally it was a big challenge and lyrically this is a wonderful track,” she explains, “hopefully it is not over-sentimental: it’s about looking back on childhood through adult life, that’s probably where the melancholy and nostalgia comes into that track. It’s also about looking back to a time when you felt everything was going well and seemed right, and it is also sung looking forward to something wonderful in mind.”

For the duo there are no regrets left behind with Thrum, “We feel more complete as artists now,” Johnny claims, “though in being more complete there’s also the aspect of being less commercial. In Thrum there was a desire to be successful that was driving us, but I don’t know if we would have appreciated reaching that objective or not then. I suppose now we are pretentious, because we see ourselves as artists, whereas with Thrum we were basically a rock band, a really good dirty rock band and we loved that, it was great. We would probably do it again as a hobby, but we wouldn’t take it as really serious music.”

Having left behind Thrum, also meant for them, leaving behind the local music scene with its excesses, “We used to drink a lot more when we were in Thrum,” Johnny remembers, “and you need to drink really A LOT to be part of the scene, but, frankly, we’re past that now.“ “I kind of get a bit envious of the local music community, because of their stamina to party 24/7,” Monica says, smiling, “I can’t do it anymore: our community consists of two people and that’s Johnny and myself and that’s as big as we probably want it to get.”

In their little ‘community’, two of the most listened artists are Mary Margaret O’Hara and Neil Young, but also Sigur Rós. “We listen to the radio a lot,” Johnny says, “in particular to the programme ‘Late Junction’ on BBC Radio 3, which is probably our main inspiration for this record. Their mix includes sacred choir music, folk music, world music, punk, rock, a bit of everything, but it’s all the best and it’s all interesting. Basically, we’ve been listening to a mix of things while working on ‘Return of the Sacred Heart’, including the Cocteau Twins, Polish composer Henryk Górecki, sacred music, Ennio Morricone, Emmylou Harris and old Scottish folk records.”

Monica and Johnny hope one day to fulfil a special dream: working with Daniel Lanois - “the most expensive producer in the world,” in Johnny’s words - or writing a soundtrack or collaborating with a classical composer such as James McMillan. “A soundtrack would lift your thought processes out of the pop sensibility and would bring in different elements of music, like classical or orchestrated music,“ Monica explains, “and a collaboration with a classical composer would actually be something completely new and extravagant and simply wonderful.” Future aspirations, dreams and projects must wait, though: for the time being, Monica will have to concentrate on promoting the new album with gigs in Aberdeen, Glasgow and Edinburgh. “Music means connecting with other people,“ Johnny states, “and I think that those who have beauty, love and spirituality in their make-up will definitely connect with our sound.”

Comrades in love, beauty and spirituality, there are some excellent news: you have just found the music for you.

Monica Queen and Johnny Smillie will play on 5th June at Mono, Glasgow, Scotland, and on 10th June at the Caledonian Backpackers, Edinburgh, Scotland

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