Goldenhammer, the setting for Divorce’s debut album, is a fictional place based on a composite of their East Midlands upbringing. It consists of childhood memories, an often bizarre tangle of associations from Wallace and Gromit through The Archers to the Nottingham DIY scene that fostered them. Perhaps as a consequence, they are not a band that has arrived with a fully formed and clearly identifiable sound. Instead, ‘Drive to Goldenhammer’ is a record that is happy to hop between genres, styles and moods, like a band given a great big dressing up box and gleefully rummaging around to find what suits them best. The result is an album with some great moments and that is never less than interesting across its twelve tracks.
The album starts with its finest song, ‘Antarctica’ in which disparate elements that ought to clash meld together impressively. There is a lo-fi feel to the drum machine led percussion, a country element courtesy the fiddle courtesy of Chris Haigh who disconcertingly is famed for writing the main riff to Steps’ ‘5, 6, 7, 8’ and a melody suggestive of The The’s ‘Uncertain Smile’ but what makes the song stand out is the interplay between Felix Mackenzie-Barrow and Tiger Cohen-Towell’s voices. The former is earth-bound and matter of fact in his delivery while the latter swoops and emotes. It is a perfectly judged combination. The song charts the end of a relationship while referencing an incident that occurred while driving to his parents in Derbyshire where they almost knocked over a newborn calf who had wandered into the road. It is indicative of the strange edge to their storytelling.
‘Lord’ is a brooding blend of country rock and full blast 90s indie rock. Written about Cohen-Towell’s first queer relationship, it has an immediate intimacy from its opening line (“I can feel your heart through your fleece”) and a way with an unlikely image in its mighty chorus (“I’m a seahorse / And I need a little sugar.”)
Starting with voices banked like a choir, ‘Fever Pitch’ balances vocal gymnastics, guitar mutations, strange synth pitches in a track possessed with the spirit of St Vincent. ‘Karen’ begins quiet and broody, compellingly portraying a performer “back to the audience… always face to the band… playing a show / to some hundreds of reptiles” before growing into an increasingly heavy, growling noise. The vocal contrasts and words that again hint at the strains of performance (“draw my breath, puff out my chest / raise a glass of emptiness”) give ‘Jet Show’ its main interest. More effectively, ‘Parachuter’ works around Mackenzie-Barrow and Cohen-Towell’s harmonised vocals, a musical backdrop that could be an alt-country Fleetwood Mac and a moving vulnerability (“takes a lot to make a person / half as strong as you deserve them / I will try to be that person / every day that I’m alive.”)
The second half begins with ‘All My Freaks’, an irreverent dip into the currents of music celebrity and its impact upon musician’s behaviour with its references to jet skis while Adam Peter Smith’s synths give the song a pop sheen. ‘Hangman’ has greater emotional depth, Mackenzie-Barrow taking lead on a song inspired by his time working in the care sector and the selflessness involved, its “I wanna lift you up” line potentially having both a literal and metaphoric meaning. The longest track at a shade over five minutes, ‘Pill’ has Cohen-Towell taking the vocal lead and is quite the shapeshifter going from electronic glitches to guitar solos and being at its best when it arrives at a gorgeous piano ballad.
With fiddle, slide guitar, piano and enigmatic opening (“where are you going? / ask my horse), the countrified ‘Old Broken String’ uses varied harmonising to create one of Gloryhammer’s finest and most atmospheric moments. ‘Where Do You Go’ sees Cohen-Towell showing a good grasp of dynamics, moving between histrionics and restraint. The album ends with the richly evocative semi-acoustic ‘Mercy’, embellished with muted synths and the vocal arrangement that ought to become Divorce’s defining feature.
The fact that ‘Drive to Gloryhammer’ is bookended by songs that make best use of the way their vocals harmonise and drift between each other suggest Divorce recognise that is their greatest strength. In between, they allow themselves space to experiment with varying degrees of success. It makes for an album that is not always musically cohesive but of distinct promise. If they can strike the balance between retaining the urge to experiment while channelling it into a more focused style, recognising that restraint is often their strongest policy, their next album could be something of great beauty.
Divorce: Drive to Gloryhammer – Out 7 March 2025 (Capitol)
– Antarctica (Official Visualiser)
I was editor of the long-running fanzine, Plane Truth, and have subsequently written for a number of publications. While the zine was known for championing the most angular independent sounds, performing in recent years with a community samba percussion band helped to broaden my tastes so that in 2021 I am far more likely to be celebrating an eclectic mix of sounds and enthusing about Made Kuti, Anthony Joseph, Little Simz and the Soul Jazz Cuban compilations as well as Pom Poko and Richard Dawson.
