By Megan Foulk, Co-Deputy Music Editor
There's a tingle of pride as I sit down for my video call with Divorce. Having shortlisted the Nottingham four-piece as one of UoB's Sounds of 2024 last year, witnessing the release of debut album Drive to Goldenhammer felt akin to sitting front row at your first born's school leaver's assembly. Delighted at the prospect of their UK and European tour at the end of this month, we sat down to talk nostalgia, Felix's love for folk fiddle, and just how many crème brûlées were consumed in that one music video.
A country, indie, folk masterpiece produced by the award-winning Catherine Marks - think Wolf Alice, boygenius and The Wombats, to name a few - Drive to Goldenhammer chases that window-gazing nostalgia we all indulge in on the Avanti West Coast from time to time.
'I think we've been living fairly scattered lives for quite a while' says Felix, 'there's a kind of yearning for a home that's never really existed and never really will. You're not sure if it's a memory or a dream. I think the album kind of taps into that.'
Fronted by co-vocalists Felix Mackenzie-Barrow and Tiger Cohen-Towell, with lead guitarist Adam Peter-Smith and drummer Kasper Sandstrom, Divorce's sound takes inspiration from Belle & Sebastian, Queen, and ABBA - boasting dense harmonies, operatic sequences and poetic lyricism.
'I think I'm proudest of 'Parachute'', says Kasper, as we reflect on some of the strains of the recording process, 'as a drummer, I'm usually not very restrained. I'm becoming more restrained, but that was a real exercise in restraint. I just love that it sounds like it was written and recorded at night - which is what we did.'
'Where Do You Go' was probably the hardest track on the album. It has a lot of space to it and required a lot of deliberation over all the parts', says Felix, 'weirdly though, we were in rehearsal the other day and it's probably the most fun to play to live.'
Whilst maintaining the chewy vocal harmonies and crunchy guitar of 2023 EP Heady Metal, the album provided the perfect opportunity to experiment with techniques that hadn't been feasible for the band before.
'Tiger suggested that we bring some fiddle into the album', says Felix, 'we wanted to keep it pretty minimal so we only put it on 'Antarctica' and 'Broken String', but Chris Hay, our fiddle player - he actually did the fiddle for Steps '5,6,7,8' - he was incredibly responsive and really up for trying more ambient techniques.'
Rejecting the constraints of genre and any risk of being pigeonholed, staying authentic to their own creative vision is at the forefront of Divorce's ethos.
'[Being a musician] is not really supposed to be this big, corporate job. It's quite a silly industry and I think there are a lot of big egos in it', explains Felix.
'A lot of the time as a musician you are at the mercy of where people are prepared to put their money, the idea of hype and buzz really just comes from the fact that people like to back a winning horse. We've had buzz and we've had a complete lack of buzz and I don't think we've been doing things differently at any time.'
'It's really just how the industry decides to move and - I don't know - not really trying to chase being cool and being that 'hot' thing, just keeping on doing what you're doing and trust that if you're honest about it, some people will like it.'
In the spirit of candour, I ask the boys about the recently released music video for 'Lord', a culinary-themed escapade filmed in Nottingham City College and Little Bricks restaurant, neatly summed up by one fan on YouTube: 'New season of The Bear looks weird'.
'I think I ate four and a half creme brûlées' says Kasper. 'I ate six', says Felix, in true competitive spirit, 'but I also stupidly had a pastel de nata for breakfast ... which is basically just another creme brûlée - it was an egg heavy day.'
Redirecting us to a more serious topic to close - as much as the band's custard eating competitiveness thrilled me - we discuss the pop-psych-coined 'quarter-life crisis' that inspired Divorce's formation.
'The brilliant thing about getting to your mid-twenties is that things aren't so dramatic. It's really not that deep ... you've been alive long enough to deal with things better', says Felix. 'Don't worry, don't worry, don't worry', adds Kasper, 'don't be afraid to try things – you have time to explore still.'
'Tiger had never played bass before we started the band - it's never too late to start learning a new instrument and to take up new things', Felix assured.
Thanking them both for allowing me to carve out a slice of our interview time for my own personal therapy, the conversation ended with me feeling a little lighter about pending graduate panic than when we started.
You can catch Divorce at Strange Brew on the 28th of March.
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