I’ve had the good fortune of seeing Quiet Time performa twice. The first time was a rare acoustic show at the Rusty Nail, and the second was when they shared a bill with naive nature at PhilaMOCA last month. Together, the shows allowed me to see two sides of the band. At the acoustic show, I could really focus on their lyrics, which are incredibly literate and thoughtful. At the electric show, their raw energy was palpable, and they kicked off the event like a match to a powder keg. Curious to learn more about them, I reached out to lead singer MaiAda Carpano with some questions…

To start, and if you don’t mind, how do you pronounce your first name?

thanks for asking! it’s pronounced “may-ya-dah”

I’m also curious about your band name. How does the phrase “Quiet Time” reflect the band’s artistic vision?

our band practices, which are held in the basement of nick & my rowhome in fishtown, were really upsetting our next door neighbor. she tried to be nice about it but she really wanted us to be quiet, which was an impossible ask. it drove me crazy because living in a city means having to accept some noise from your neighbors, and some loud music from 7-9 pm on tuesdays wasn’t unreasonable. especially since the rest of the time we’re extremely boring and noiseless.

we jokingly called ourselves QUIET TIME in response to that. the neighbor moved but the name stuck. i guess you could say it reflects our vision in the sense that it reflects our petty attitude towards anyone who tries to silence us.

Your Bandcamp bio describes Quiet Time as “bubblegrunge,” which I love. How do you see those two elements, the bubble and the grunge, coming together in your music, and how do you strike a balance between them?

bubblegrunge was my top listened to genre on spotify, which is where that came from. it’s probably just a made up AI word haha, but it fits this specific yet broad sound of mostly girl-fronted bands that blend emo / punk / indie rock into their own thing, and which is a really philly sound. bands like all dogs and mannequin pussy and hop along, who all really inspire me.

as a band, every member is pretty varied in their taste. we joke that randy only listens to punk that came out before 1989, tom has been in the pop-punk scene since forever, i’m obsessed with 90’s twee (k records, belle & sebastian). so i think with each of us bringing in our personal taste into the songwriting process, we fall naturally into this bubblegrunge mix of things.

The other part of your bio, “we’re weirdos but it’s boring,” appears in your song “shout out mrs. albertson.”  What do you find boring about being a weirdo?

i think others will have their own interpretation but “shout out mrs. albertson” is based on my feelings and experiences from when i was a teenager. i remember reading 17 magazine where celebrities were talking about how they were “so weird” when they were kids, they’d say stuff like “i was such a loser, i’d just skip school and smoke pot with my friends”. and i remember thinking “wait but if you had friends – friends who got you weed – then you were less of a loser than i am now”.

like i was a teen in the early 2000’s when the weirdos i saw were in pop punk music videos of sum 41 and good charlotte and avril lavigne throwing parties and breaking things. or romanticized black and white images of falling apart on livejournal and tumblr.

and i was also weird – i wore a dog collar to school and a lot of black eyeliner. but my life didn’t look like that. i was still boring. i didn’t drink, i had no where to go on the weekend, i didn’t feel like i had friends, and i liked reading books more than talking to people.

it’s that feeling of being an outsider with the knowledge that you don’t want an ordinary life, yet still remaining stagnant and not knowing what to do you with yourself despite that.

Of course, your shows are anything but boring. What animates your live performances?

i’m so inspired by so many incredible women performers. missy (mannequin pussy,) amy (amyl and the sniffers), kathleen hanna (bikini kill), dani (surfbort) to name just a few. they set the bar high.

and as a whole i think all of us are just genuinely so excited to be up on stage sharing our music in front of others. what makes live music good is the exchange of energy between the people listening and the people playing. we don’t take that for granted.

When I saw Quiet Time perform at PhilaMOCA, you read from a couple of books. What were they, and how do the passages you read fit into the arc of your live show?

the first book is “wayside stories from sideways school” by louis sachar, a collection of extremely weird and silly stories about a group of 3rd graders. the one i’m reading is my favorite, about a new kid named sammy who is really rude and stinky and wearing layers of raincoats. once they’re all removed, it turns out under all those coats there was just a dead rat. kind of a perfect allegory to how it feels to discover that someone you thought you knew was actually just a scumbag!

the other book is “sellout” by dan ozzi but i’m not actually reading from it. i just know that if i don’t have something written down i’ll get nervous and ramble, so i slipped a piece of paper inside with my thoughts written down. i like using that book as a cover since i’m talking about the feeling of growing up and selling out.

but yeah… every QUIET TIME show does always come with at least one story time. maybe that’s really what QUIET TIME alludes to. library time. all our songs are stories, and a lot of them have literary references (from high brow to children’s books), so it’s all on theme. 🙂

You reference Checkhov in your song “shut up i’m trying to cry over here.” Were you an English major, or do you just like to read?

i like to read! is it embarrassing to say i haven’t read checkhov yet though? i usually avoid reading books by men which cuts out a lot of classics. but i have him on my tbr pile.

Your song “shout out mrs. albertson” describes a teacher who tries to save a student by telling her to let Jesus into her life. Did that really happen? Are you the student? Is there a real Mrs. Albertson?

yes that literally happened haha. my chemistry teacher in catholic school really wanted to save me. sadly for her, it didn’t work.

I love the video for that one! How did it come about, and who did the animation?

yeah the video is amazing, right?! it was a perfect opportunity that fell on us when i was chatting with my sister-in-law’s sister – who is an animator – and she mentioned wanting to submit an entry to a music video contest but needing a song for it.

her name is maro – maro.mation on instagram. she came up with the entire storyboard and vision on her own, and she captured the vibe and story of the song so perfectly in every way. she just really got it.

There’s a lot of ambivalence in that song that I think carries over into some of your other songs as well. Nothing is ever all-good, but it’s never all-bad either, which runs counter to the typical formulas for the ultra-positive love song or the ultra-negative breakup song. Maybe you’re exploring the more complicated in-between spaces that constitute real relationships?

maybe because i didn’t have a lot of break-ups. nick and i are happily married and have been together for a long time. but before that, i had years of situationships. so just a lot of “wait so what are we?” and then getting ghosted.

that tension that exists when you’re in the middle of the wrong relationship drives a lot of my writing. you don’t want to let go, you still have feelings for the person, but you’re not feeling good about it. those feelings sucked at the time, but now it’s great emotional drama to write about.

What’s on the horizon for Quiet Time?

we’ve got a few fun things lined up! we’ve got a live session with CART music coming up in april (@cart_music on ig). we have a few shows in the works as well, that we’ll be announcing soon. and we’re hoping to get back in the studio this fall to record a couple of new songs. following us on ig – @quiettimephl – is the best way to keep up with the latest!