Turning 25? Choose Divorce.

Some bands collect fans by riding on the very fringes of what’s considered acceptable, even by enthusiasts of their genre; others play the field, making music that’s just different enough to collect indie credibility yet sound dangerously close to a diplomat’s attempt at making music. Then, there’s Divorce: the rare band that can make derivative, absurdist music still so objectively likeable that, even in the conference room of a showcase festival – the most nerve-hopping place to be asked what kind of music you’re into – bringing up their name is enough to end a sort of conversational cold war amongst music fans volleying opinions.

Perhaps, the fondness towards the album can be attributed to harmonies sometimes so ascendant that it sounds like they’ve achieved synchronised nirvana, and so fraught at others that it they might as well be dueling each other off a cliff; or perhaps it’s in the melodies so liquid they feel pushed forward by an invisible current that a fourth law of motion should be added just to describe their inevitability. Or, maybe it’s due to the restless, youthful instrumentals carried with the sort of “post-everything” command that blends a sense of untouchable nostalgia with innovative freshness: in their first full-length release Drive to Goldenhammer, folk-rock quartet Divorce frays from their pastoral folk roots to serve up jagged industrial rock, liminal ambient folk, Queen-esque theatrical harmonies, traditional harp and string linings, and even mid-2010s mild electronic experimentation that could’ve comfortably resided in that particular era of painfully self-aware independent dance music.

I met up with co-singer and songwriter of Divorce, Felix Mackenzie-Barrow and guitarist Adam Peter-Smith in the greenrooms of Live At Leeds last month to discuss their success, dual songwriting process, and production choices. Unexpectedly, Felix shared that to achieve a mix of originality with genre nostalgia, you almost have to avoid the urge to pay direct homage to the bands that you love: ‘I think what you do as an artist, listening to artists, is less of a selective process and more of a pool that you subconsciously dip into when you need inspiration. In a way, when you know exactly what you’re referencing, it’s probably not the thing that you should do. For instance, I’ve been listening to a lot of Bulgarian folk – and I’m sure it seeps in there, but trying to consciously do that or pitch a tribute record would definitely not be my place, and also would be a very difficult pitch’, shared Felix. Then, of course, there’s the fact that everything their producer and indie legend Catherine Marks (Wolf Alice, Foals, The Killers) touches turns to gold: ‘I think it was a very collaborative relationship, and the skill set that she has is insane. It was the first time we had ever really been given the level of space that she gave us, in terms of conviction in our own ideas’, Felix and Adam shared of their experience having her co-shape the record. Yet, the album’s arc and thematic continuities are what free such a diverse project from sounding clunkily superglued together: Tiger and Felix, lead singers and songwriters of the band, were not only heavily involved in theatre but were in each other’s creative orbit from a young age, an early connection that contributes to impeccably fused two-voice songwriting and a knack for building an arc that accumulates increasingly rich context to its anthology.

Interpretive liberties accounted for, Drive to Goldenhammer is a real-time quarter-life crisis and desperate attempt to reconcile opposite desires: a delightfully incohesive and winding existential statement from young travelling artists whose chief drive is to find a place that feels like home and chief fear is stagnating. How does one maintain relationships in a deeply transient life, but how can one hope to survive a flitting, transient life without relationships to ground them? The mutual whimsy and dread of always driving – like you’re maybe about to find the place that defines you, or maybe you’re just wasting energy and gas – is so frankly explored in the album, it could be described as a ruthless unearthing of every transient young person and translated into something far more metaphorical and fit for a lovably campy coming-of-age stage play. ‘It’s a home that doesn’t really exist,’ Felix told Rolling Stone UK about the elusive Goldenhammer that they’re supposedly headed towards. “I don’t know if any of us would be able to summarise exactly what this place looks like or who inhabits it, because I think we’re on the way there. Everything we’re doing is always part of the journey towards it.”

Easygoing opening electronic folk-fusion track Antarctica kicks off the journey, quite on the nose, with, “I’ve got a long drive/Nothing much to think of, but Antarctica/And thinking of you, honey”, and a shy rationalisation of feeling confined in a nonetheless healthy relationship: “It comes and goes/like someone pulling on a rope that gets a little longer each time I get free”. After pulling off twee, almost Elephant-6 Collective whimsical ambient-folk, Lord sweeps in to clarify the album’s identity as one that is anything but naive or laidback. It’s the clearest nod to self-loathing on the record, an essential fixture in a twenty-something’s indie album: “You said you’d love me since the day I was born/I don’t know what for/I can’t explain it”, and conceding “I’d be damned if I don’t make it home tonight”.

Despite rocking a bit of a sleeper build with a loose, stream-of-consciousness composition, Fever Pitch features a refreshing honesty often hidden by metaphor and frisk in other parts of the record: “It occurred to me, late at night/I could have made it up to you/And that would end a losing fight/But why would I cross out my truth?” It’s a final attempt at diplomacy and frankness, yet landing at the weary conclusion: “I learnt quick that all your plans/Involve you being closer to a fever pitch/And that’s your cross to bear”; a bit of spite followed by the self-loathing of realising the narrator secretly craves the same slightly taboo, difficult life as their partner: “But I cannot relieve that itch/I can’t relieve that itch/But I’m no further on it seems/I wish we didn’t want these things”. Slow-burning, methodical Karen combines orchestral intention with drum-heavy alternative rock decisive enough to slice through the record with a hot knife – it’s the moment the album decides to stop brooding and start sprinting, a decisive kick on the levee that had been preventing the record from fully free-falling.

Weighty Jet Show, self-described by the band as “maybe the most Divorce-defining track”, stands as the record’s unofficial unfurling of the freak flag. Somehow, it manages to juggle careless absurdism in one hand and the most charged emotional overcurrents in the other, switching dizzily back and forth from dreams of nearly-nightmarish theatrical expression of to abruptly “thinking about home”, one dream juxtaposed against another of entirely opposite form. Whether the dreams of unleashed creative fire or that of coming home to somebody stable is the ‘absurd’ one is intentionally left vague, surely more of an authentic expression rather than poetic manipulation. Jet Show is hemmed in with tight musical corridors, nails-on-a-chalkboard production, and crashing drums perfectly designed to narrate the claustrophobic fork in the road where everything feels high-stakes and the two strongest desires seem doomed to sit at the opposite ends of the spectrum of opportunity forever.

Pill, another unapologetically self-possessed fixture on the record and critic sweetheart, spins even deeper into feverish, off-kilter territory with pulsing drums, evocative instrumental solos, and an unconventional three-part structure designed to convey emotional turbulence. On paper, it’s high-tension tracks like these that should seem as though everyone is fighting for dominance to express their ideas; in practice, they capture the looseness keeps the album from leaning overly aggressive. ‘I think they are both quite strange, and written about strange things, but they also kind of make sense in my head”, Felix said about Jet Show and Pill. ‘I write odd stuff, but I know that I’m not that unique and if it resonates with me, it will probably resonate with my audience, too’.

Just in case Jet Show or Pill didn’t push the boat out enough, high-pitched electronic fever dream All My Freaks continues to shake off of the most manic energies animating the middle of the record. It’s also a refreshingly clear statement: whatever the endpoint they’re looking for is, it’s certainly not fame. ‘The song is sort of a comical take on how the industry feels. We’ve always known that it’s not a meritocracy. Also, the stuff that the industry brings in terms of hype and buzz isn’t what fulfils you’, Felix shared when asked the meaning of the midpoint tracks.

Perhaps the statement that you can only know what you want by finding out what you don’t has a touch of truth to it. After the possessing energies in All My Freaks are drained from their systems, they land upon a meeker, slightly goodie-two-shoes twinkle in Parachute – almost an apology for not knowing what got into them in the middle of the record. It’s quite a sweet song, and likely the least emotionally dense on the project, vowing ‘It takes a lot to make a person/Half as strong as you deserve them/I will try to be that person/Every day I am alive.’ Second-to-final track Where Do You Go is a high-tension, drum-and-bass-led track that sounds like it’s asking someone else a series of questions but is quite obviously interrogating itself.

If Where Do You Go is the final question, Mercy is the final answer. It’s more than a thawed-out, layered folk song with pristine vocal harmonies: it’s the only time Goldenhammer is actually mentioned in a lyric, decelerating from the steam gathered in the back half to settle along an evenly democratic track, as though the angst-filled height of the album – the power struggles, the tugging at ropes in Antarctica, the “ripping all the chains off” in Jet Show – didn’t even matter. And, as conveyed by the lyrics, they don’t:

“My breaking voice gave up the golden hammer/Above the scene, nothing really mattered/We put our raincoats on and watched the clouds roll by”, and “There’s blood on the wall, I will help you clean it all”, landing upon the final statement of the record: “I will always love you for that/I will always love you like that”. Mercy is palpably warm, shoulders-down, and unmistakably C.S.-Lewis-done-right in its specific breed of broad-stroked, washed-out form of ending.

It is my opinion that the most timeless music is made when the artist postures themselves as a willing medium for relatable expression than self-mythologising, as though the void they reach their hands into for inspiration is collective yet a bit mysterious – excellent music sounds both genre-pushing and surprisingly familiar, like you’re reconnecting with a feeling you’ve always had but couldn’t quite understand without rhythm, meter, and metaphor. In Drive to Goldenhammer, Divorce manages to explore the various shades of longing, footlooseness fatigue, and quarter-life crisis. Each song illustrates an essential fixture of the human experience, and all maintain enough presence at every twist and turn to avoid treating everything leading up to a theatrical ending as mere liminal space – making the ultimate conclusion of nostalgic simplicity as a prudent choice rather than a sign of regression that much sweeter. After burning through all the brambled hyperkinetic material, they manage to land upon a hopeful statement: that a home somehow akin to that of childhood can be found, but it’s not a place you ought to return to with your tail tucked between your legs. Instead, it’s a rebirth of innocence that can only come after manic searching rolls us down the peak of inner turmoil into a more restful humility.