Fast-rising Nottingham quartet DIVORCE are today announcing their debut album Drive to Goldenhammer alongside its lead single ‘All My Freaks’. Drive to Goldenhammer is set for release on March 7th 2025 via Gravity / Capitol.
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 upcoming four-night residency at hometown venue Bodega (the first band to do so) and will wrap-up their October UK tour with their biggest headline show to date at London’s 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.
The album's lead single 'All My Freaks' is out today, a song which skewers the ego of the music industry with radiant synths, bright riffs and British irreverence. Tiger says:
"Being a musician can be brutal. I feel like you hear more and more songs coming from artists purely about the trials and tribulations of being a musician, feeling like you aren’t getting enough, or feeling like you’ve got too much and you don’t deserve it. It’s gotten a bit meta if you think about it. All My Freaks is about that too, written from the perspective of a humorous/tragic caricature of an up-and-coming artist, this song is laughing at our own egos and yet acknowledging the power that they wield. Putting this out as the first offering from our debut album felt fitting, as we are hypothetically straddling our jet skis and crossing the ocean of delusion to hopefully reach the isle of public approval."
Continuing about the album, the band says: "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!"
Divorce - Headline UK tour dates 2024
25 Sept - Bodega, Nottingham UK - SOLD OUT
26 Sept - Bodega, Nottingham, UK - SOLD OUT
27 Sept - Bodega, Nottingham, UK - SOLD OUT
28 Sept - Bodega, Nottingham, UK - SOLD OUT
03 Oct - Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff, UK
04 Oct - The Cavern, Exeter, UK
05 Oct - The Joiners Arms, Southampton, UK
07 Oct - The Boileroom, Guildford, UK
08 Oct - The Forum, Tunbridge Wells, UK
09 Oct - Face Bar, Reading, UK
10 Oct - Whereelse?, Margate, UK
12 Oct - The Waterfront Studio, Norwich, UK
13 Oct - The Portland Arms, Cambridge, UK
14 Oct - Yellow Arch Studios, Sheffield, UK - SOLD OUT
15 Oct - The Parish, Huddersfield, UK
17 Oct - The Crescent, York, UK
18 Oct - Cluny 2, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK
19 Oct - Future Yard, Birkenhead, UK
20 Oct - Blackpool Central Library, Blackpool, UK
22 Oct - The Horn, St Albans, UK
23 Oct - Islington Academy Hall, London, UK
