Divorce

Praise for Divorce and debut album Drive to Goldenhammer

"Album of the year contender? Undoubtedly." - Clash ★ ★ ★ ★1/2

‘Drive to Goldenhammer’ is both carefully constructed and marvellously spontaneous; a trip planned with obsessive detail that still manages to find adventure at every turn. – Dork ★ ★ ★ ★

“Drive to Goldenhammer sees the quartet plant strong roots and demonstrates that their combination of talent, originality, and introspection has the potential to journey anywhere they wish.” - The Line of Best Fit

“Felix Mackenzie-Barrow and Tiger Cohen-Towell duet like Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks pre-Fleetwood Mac. Heroic.” – MOJO ★ ★ ★ ★

“filled with rich storytelling and contemplative confessionals. An excellent debut.” – Record Collector ★ ★ ★ ★

“a strong early contender for Album of The Year” – The Skinny ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

"unique and wonderful" - The Sun ★ ★ ★ ★

“An album that feels comfortable and confident, made by a group of people that have found their own idiosyncratic rhythm.” – Uncut ★ ★ ★ ★

Divorce have released their debut album. 'Drive to Goldenhammer' is out now via Gravity / Capitol.

Talking about the release of the record, the band says: "As Divorce, an ethos of ours is to lean on the subconscious for creative decision making. So that’s what we did; this album is an active effort to not overthink in an effort try to be as true to ourselves as we possibly could. We followed the songs, as we’ve always done, prioritised feeling, and not shied away from the humour. Drive to Goldenhammer is about moving, it’s about trundling towards an unseeable and intangible goal, but finding life happening to you along that road. So don’t worry too much about Goldenhammer, the drive is the thing."

On top of recent single's 'All My Freaks', 'Antarctica', 'Pill' and 'Hangman', the band are today sharing a video for 'Lord'. Co-vocalist and guitarist Tiger Cohen-Towell says of the song:

"A seahorse is so vulnerable and strange, so cute and also bizarre. It felt like the right imagery for Lord somehow. The song ‘Pencil Skirt’ by Pulp was a lyrical inspiration for this track; with it being an unusual expression of sexual desire, but that song does have a bit of a pantomime villain vibe. I didn’t necessarily want the lyrics to come across as villainous but instead slightly pathetic. I think often in songs about yearning a lot of the honesty is concealed in cliches, I just wanted to write about how much you regress to a teenage mindset when you fancy someone, no matter how old you are. I think it’s funny. It actually turned into one of the most sonically joyful tracks on the album which is pretty funny, too."
 

More about Divorce's debut album Drive to Goldenhammer

Initially meeting as teenagers through the city’s close-knit DIY scene, the band – completed by members Tiger Cohen-Towell (vocals / bass), Felix Mackenzie-Barrow (vocals / guitar), Adam Peter Smith (guitar / synth) and Kasper Sandstrøm (drums) - came together as Divorce in mid-2021, releasing a slew of genre-defiant singles that quickly caught the attention of tastemakers the world over. Last year they signed to Gravity Records (Universal Music) for their acclaimed Heady Metal EP, before filling 2024 with a raft of international festivals and tours with Bombay Bicycle Club, The Vaccines and Everything Everything. They have since sold out their own four-night residency at hometown venue Bodega (the first band to do so) and wrapped up their UK tour with their biggest headline show to date at a sold out Islington Assembly Hall.

Adjusting to life as a touring, transient entity began to leave the band feeling “like we were being dragged through a hedge backwards – in a nice way!” and as a result searching to carve out a place that they can call home within their music. The result is a pastoral blend of country, indie-rock, folk and chamber pop that traces the upheaval of the last few years while planting roots in their own sound. Influenced by location, memory, warmth and a deep-seated love for their post-industrial Midlands, they explore themes of transformation across 12 meticulously crafted tracks that balance heart-on-sleeve sentiments and tongue-in-cheek humour, devastation, playfulness and all-consuming feelings. Sonically rich and lyrically open-hearted, it sees Divorce assemble a shelter for themselves amid the chaos and leave the front door open to everyone.

Drive to Goldenhammer was written and demoed across four recording stays at rural North Yorkshire outpost The Calm Farm. Sessions spanned the spring, summer, autumn and winter - the band writing night and day - before the completed songs were brought to life with producer Catherine Marks (boygenius, Foals, Wolf Alice) at Real World Studios. As a result, the record has a well-worn and lived-in feeling, with a natural warmth, something they deliberately wanted to bake into the album to reflect the band’s identity as it relates to the Midlands, but also as – in a nod to the fantasy location of Goldenhammer - a fictional refuge from the world at large.

Still refusing to box themselves into a genre, Drive to Goldenhammer lays the Divorce “stamp” across a breadth of influences. Across songs that waltz around weaving riffs and vocal acrobatics, moody acoustic introspection, walls of alt-rock, shape-shifting electronic glitches, with string flourishes, these are songs that build, bloom and release, fittingly always finding their way home under the influence of the band’s stewardship. It is an album that much like its writers, leaves the door open to discovery, and actively reaches out for connection.

Tiger says of the album: "We’re very proud of Drive to Goldenhammer. We got to make an album the way we wanted to, kept the weird parts in, followed the warmth and didn’t overthink it. This album pays homage to seeking place and home; one of the great human levellers. Much of life feels at odds with this particular need. And to Goldenhammer; you are a reason to keep driving. We will find you again and again!"