Music
Divorce: “We were all witnessing moments of creation”
Felix Mackenzie-Barrow and Tiger Cohen-Towell on touring, their debut album and finding a sense of home.
Effort isn’t something you can fault Divorce for. Since their formation in 2021, they’ve barely stopped. Formed out of a number of various other projects from in and around the Nottingham scene, it seems they’ve put their all into this one. Originally meeting as teenagers, it took a quarter-life crisis to bring them together musically. Since then, they’ve released two excellent EP’s and put together a seemingly never-ending touring schedule. 2024 saw them embark on their biggest headline tour, starting with a four-night home residency at The Bodega and culminating with their biggest ever show at London’s Islington Assembly Hall. Inbetween trips to America for South by Southwest and a stacked summer in Europe for festival season, they managed to find time to record their debut album.
It is fitting then that that album, Drive To Goldenhammer, is set on the road. Drawing from a range of influences, it is more considered than previous offerings, given space to truly delve into its transient world. Alt-country-indie-grunge never sounded so good.
Speaking before the album’s release on 7 March and the start of yet another tour, co-vocalists and songwriters Felix Mackenzie-Barrow and Tiger Cohen-Towell talk the making of that debut, touring and making sense of it all.
You’ve had a very busy year, could you feel the momentum of what you’ve been working for finally coming to fruition?
Felix: Totally!
Tiger: It’s very grounding I think, having people actually bring themselves to a show. You can kind of lose track of who is bothered about the music when you go off of streams and things that are virtual – it’s really difficult to know how people are taking it. A lot of that stuff, it’s not conceptual, but you can be lost in your own brain I think when you’re not on the road and not actually seeing the expressions on people’s faces when you play. Every single show on the tour there was something special and unique about it. Everybody that came to see us play had a different thing to say to us at the merch desk. It was great and it felt like a milestone, the London show, but so did the Nottingham shows, and so did the other shows.
Felix: We had a song in the London set, ‘That Hill’, which was written about that feeling of first starting the band and working other jobs to try and make ends meet and feeling like things are not going anywhere and you don’t know what’s happening; you’re trying to climb up this big hill, literally in the song. So, you write certain songs years before you end up playing them to a room like that and that’s a massive pay off.
I was going to ask about those Nottingham shows. You are a Nottingham band, so a residency like that must’ve been special?
Tiger: it was a totally unique experience going and playing at Bodega. It’s a venue we know really well, our drummer Kasper worked there for years, and we played loads of support shows there when we were in our previous project. Playing it for four consecutive nights to sold out crowds was really fun and intimate
I remember when we did our first headline there it felt like such a big deal and then as you move through your career the rooms get a little bit bigger, incrementally. Being able to revisit that venue, which is such an important venue for touring bands, and such an important venue for Nottingham, and be able to put some respect on its name and play shows there again was really nice.
Felix: It kind of felt like working there for a week! It made me want to do more residencies like that. You get to really feel out the room and I think by the fourth show we were so accustomed to what the space was going to do and how to reach people. Also, the energy of each night was totally different. I wouldn’t be able to say that one was better than the other, they were different crowds. It’s a really good example of how you can play one room one night and it feels totally different to the same room on another night, simply because the make-up of the people is different.
So that was interesting, and it made me feel like I’d far rather play loads of shows in small venues than one show in a big venue, because I feel like I can look everyone in the eye a bit and you feel like you can genuinely connect. I can’t really imagine playing an arena or a stadium, maybe that’d be great, but I can’t imagine having that same connection with the people who are listening to the music.
You also had your biggest ever show, in London, how was that experience?
Felix: It felt like a big step up, especially when I walked out and saw the crowd for the first time. We’ve played venues three times the size of that venue, but as a support and that was nerve-wracking. But when you know that those people have come just to see you, and it’s your headline show, it’s another level. Suddenly 900 people feels crazy. And I remember looking up at the crowd as we walked out and I didn’t consciously do it but my voice went “ahh” and cracked. I heard myself doing it, like I was having an out of body experience.
Tiger: We’ve played a lot of shows, and we’ve played a lot of headline shows, but that London show was the realest one. It felt like the realest in the amount of people that were there but also in terms of how well the audience listened and responded in the ways we would’ve wanted them to. I don’t even remember the show I was just so excited, jumping around for the whole thing! It was my favourite show we’ve ever done, I can say that pretty confidently.
Felix: Having said that, all of the shows on the tour were really nicely full and all of the crowds were really nice. I would also say that that London show is my favourite, but some of those shows in venues we’ve not played before, in cities we’ve not played before, and you get a full room, in a way that feels just as good. Even though it’s like half the size, you’re like wow I didn’t realise our music carries like this to this many people in this place I’ve never even been to before. That always blows my mind. So really it was three weeks of being consistently really surprised and happy and grateful that people were coming out to see us.
Moving on to this year, you’ve got another big tour coming up. Is there anything that you’re particularly looking forward to?
Tiger: We’re really excited to do a headline tour of Europe. It’s something that we’ve held out for because it is quite expensive to go over to Europe and play headline shows. We’ve only done festivals in Europe before, and so I’m looking forward to being able to actually gauge who is out there. At this stage, I’m like will anyone come. I don’t know. I really hope they do, but just to be able to travel around and connect with people and play the album further than just the UK will be lovely. And the way that we tour as a band, we’re all kind of creatures of habit and we’re all very different and so I’m very intrigued and excited to see what the vibe of this tour will be. We’re also hoping to do some writing while we travel and figuring out how to do that will be interesting.
Lets talk about the album, then. It’s a different sound from some of your previous releases – was that a natural evolution, or more of a conscious decision?
Felix: It was a pretty natural evolution. It was the first time we’d ever been able to commit real time to writing in a room together as a four. Until that point, we’d really been scrabbling stuff together and chasing our tails for those first couple of EP’s. We didn’t really have any space or time to write them in, so it was quite frantic, whereas with the album we had time, and we had a space to work in. We’d go to The Farm in Wetherby and we would go there for four days at a time and basically not leave the house. We’d start working at 10am and finish working at midnight, or 1 in the morning, and then get up and do it all over again. We were all staying together, cooking together, eating together, so the entire time was creative – that’s special.
As a band it’s not often you get that dedicated time and I think what it led to was a more kind of holistic approach. We were really in it together as a four and ideas were coming out of accidental stuff or improvisational stuff. We were all witnessing moments of creation which is really cool. We had more time to deliberate on things, but I don’t think there was a huge amount of formulaic thinking, it was really just following what the songs needed and what our instincts were telling us. I think because we had a larger body of work to move within, we were able to explore slightly different song form or more expansive approaches to songwriting. We were able to explore themes in a longer format and find what the mood of the record is over time. I think it just allowed us to put a bit more thought into what was holding it all together.
Do you think you gave it that thought given it was an album and not an EP?
Tiger: Yeah, totally. It’s kind of inevitable. I think that when you’re recording EP’s, it’s sort of a build up to a debut album. You don’t feel the same pressure to create a body of work that’s comparable to the amount of attention to detail you put into a debut album.
It’s not a concept album at all but we were acutely aware of what we were trying to say. We picked the songs that we felt were the ones that fit together in those themes. And I do think with an album it feels like so much space to find variation and dynamics. Before it, of course we thought about the EP’s and they were important in the journey of the band, but I think this is the most important thing we’ve done yet creatively.
Did you feel that pressure going into it?
Felix: No, I don’t think it felt like pressure, I think it felt like opportunity. It felt like we were finally getting the opportunity to work on a f*cking record which is what we always wanted to do. We have always wanted to be a band that writes lots of records, because those are the kinds of bands that we love. I don’t find the EP format particularly interesting – we love getting into the meat of an album and it felt like we were getting given an opportunity to work on a proper record.
In terms of the songwriting, did your dynamic change, and does bringing Kasper and Adam into it change things?
Tiger: It’s kind of nice to have a group. Before, we started off as really good mates that started a band together and I think for a long time in our songwriting trajectory it felt like fun, and we were incubating the things we did but we didn’t really know exactly what we were and what we wanted to do. Bringing Kasper and Adam into the equation gave us more of a feel of the kind of band we wanted to be.
For this last record and the work before it, we’ve written the lyrics and maybe the basic chord structures to songs largely, but they always get chopped and changed when we go into the room with Kasper and Adam and their input arrangement wise – they are integral parts of the Divorce sound. And I think in terms of our relationships as a band we are really good friends, we do have a lot of stuff to do as a band and we do live far away from each other now, but we do still make time for each other as friends whenever we can, and I think that really brings the best work out of us.
Felix: It could have also felt really lonely if it was just me and Tiger. Having Kasper and Adam takes a lot of pressure off our relationship as friends and allows us to relax. Had it just been the two of us trying to make this album, it would have been completely different and it’s so much richer for having Kasper and Adam.
And as friends it just makes it so much easier to feel part of a troupe. When you’re on the road, you’re spending 24 hours a day with each other. There’s obviously going to be little tensions and it’s important to learn how to diffuse those in the healthiest possible way. Even though you’re adding extra relationships into it, having a kind of broader church makes it easier to listen to what you need in the moment. Everyone has their one-on-one relationships within that four, and you have different dynamics between each of you. So you feel a lot less lonely, and it forces you to maintain a more healthy rhythm.
I know you’ve talked before about the band as feeling like finding a sense of home. That must be a really lovely feeling.
Felix: I think given how fragmented and transient our lives have been since we started this band and the amount of touring we’ve done it’s been hard to find much consistency, or home, off the road. So, when you’re on the road you kind of have to find it somewhere. I think having each other has allowed us to have that warmth and familiarity that we’ve built as a group. That’s what was so special about writing the album was that we were in a new setting, but we made those settings feel like home because we were all there.
Goldenhammer is obviously fictional, but there’s a real sense of place on the album – how important is the Midlands and Nottingham to both you and the album?
Tiger: Well, it’s very important. Felix and I don’t live in the East Midlands currently. I have lived in Glasgow for about five days, so I’ve not exactly been long gone.
Felix: I feel like I’ve lived in Bristol for five days as well!
Tiger: You have! You’ve probably only collectively lived in Bristol for five days.
Tiger: I think you don’t feel as a teenager, when you grow up in somewhere like the East Midlands, that it’s got much of a place on the map creatively. That is something my younger brain envisioned to be happening in places like London, and even Manchester, but it’s mostly London which gets the limelight. And we did live there, Felix and I were housemates there about a year ago, but I don’t think either of us quite match up with London. Not trying to force ourselves to be in a place that doesn’t necessarily serve us creatively, just for opportunities, has been a good decision.
I think that Nottingham has served as an inspiration constantly. It’s got such an identity as a place, it’s a very warm place in a lot of ways and is quite an overlooked place, but has an incredible amount of culture if you care to look. I don’t think we’re a political band, inherently making art is political, but we’re not trying to signal many things with our album other than our personal experiences. But we are Midlands kids really and that is always going to be true. You can’t change where you were born or where you were raised and I wouldn’t change it. I love Nottingham.
Felix: It probably creeps into the imagery of the record, and even the mindset of how you go about writing the songs. It’s kind of hard to put your finger on, but it does just naturally relate back to that. But the record is called Drive to Goldenhammer because the record isn’t set there – the record is set in this in-between space, this kind of boundary place. You’re moving through the landscape with the aim of getting somewhere and that somewhere signifies what you think might be home or some idea of calmness or stillness. The songs all feel like they’re on the way to it rather than they exist there.
Speaking about the songs, there’s a real sense of intimacy and vulnerability in many of the songs. I assume that’s a very natural process, but is it something that can be quite daunting?
Felix: The level of intimacy that you choose to allow the listener is a conscious choice. And in some ways, I think half of the job of being a good songwriter is to make someone feel like something is more intimate than it is. Or I guess you have the opportunity to choose how intimate you want it to be. Sometimes that intimacy can be really cathartic as a songwriter and sometimes audiences respond to it very well. Because really, when you boil it down those really human experiences, those are often the most intimate feeling ones, and they are very universal.
I don’t really like thinking about relatability too much, but its inherently something I think a lot of people go through if it’s something human and real. I guess that is a good byproduct of that intimacy. But sometimes it can be hard, if there’s things going on in your life and then you’re singing about it. Or songs come back and surprise you and you’re like “woah I didn’t realise I still felt that that much”.
Tiger: My favourite lyrics that I write, personally, are often ones that I don’t think about at all whilst writing. My favourite lines, and the ones that I feel the most emotional performing live, are always those ones that come straight from my subconscious. The ones that I don’t really understand the first time I’ve written them, and then I’ll look back on them and be like “oh yeah that actually makes perfect sense” and I’m sort of in awe at how your brain can just do that.
Felix, I think, experiences a similar thing. On a song like ‘Hangman’, I’m always particularly blown away by the lyrics on that track. I think I would struggle so much to write a song about the subject matter of working a job in care; I think that Felix just did it so much justice, made it so personal and not gratuitous. I remember the first time I heard that song it hit me in the heart, and I thought so many people would be able to hear that and resonate with it too. I mean I’ve never worked a job in care, but I’ve cared about people and wanted to help and felt helpless. I think it’s a difficult line to tread with such emotional subject matter and such delicate subject matter, but when it goes right it is usually from another plane. You’re not thinking about it too hard, it’s just what you think and it’s your honesty coming out.
Felix: Yeah definitely. Thanks for saying that, that’s really nice. And on ‘Hangman’, there is a lot of vulnerability and emotional content and it is very intimate, but I think that the only way I was able to access that was by being almost not conscious of it. To the point whereby I was writing it so late at night and I was so tired that I wasn’t really aware of what I was saying. And stuff comes out then. Like Tiger’s saying, when you’re in that subconscious spot, often I find the best lines come from that moment in-between being awake and asleep, so really late at night or really early in the morning. Your editor is somewhere else, it doesn’t exist, it’s not in the room. So things just fall onto the page and I think that’s when that intimacy comes through.
Would you say its similar when you’re incorporating your influences, too. Do you see where things land or is it more deliberate than that?
Felix: Sometimes you get things where you’re like “oh I’d love to do something like that”, but I feel that usually when you get a big idea about wanting to sound like something it usually flops.
Tiger: There’s definitely been songs that I’ve listened to, and been like, ‘I want to write a song that sounds exactly like that’ or that does the same thing to me, and I just think it’s an impossible task to set yourself as a writer. However, there’s been times I’ve done that with songs, and I’ve said that “this song that I wrote was really inspired by this song by whoever” and then people will be like, I cannot hear any musical relation between those two songs, but I know that I wanted to try and evoke that feeling. I think that’s the beautiful thing about being a creative is that nothing is truly original, but you find originality in what you’re inspired by and how you regurgitate that.
I think we’ve never really been drawn to, well I say this with a slight lack of self-awareness, because I know that our music does sound a bit like country, but I don’t think in our heads or our creative process we’ve ever really tried to emulate a genre. Instead, we’ve just been attracted to what we like and been intuitive about the songs we write. Often there are similarities, song by song, but I think on this album there’s a great deal of variation musically, and we’ve certainly pushed our boundaries. We love the songs and care about how we feel playing them -– those are the things we’re thinking about rather than genre or particular artists. We tried not to worry too much about cohesion and rather about feel and honesty.
Drive To Goldenhammer is released 7 March 2025.
Catch Divorce on their UK tour throughout spring 2025 – find tickets here
