Divorce: Drive To Goldenhammer – An Impressive and Transportative Debut Album

Off the back of 3 single releases and 2 EPs, Nottingham-based 4-piece Divorce have released their long-awaited debut LP Drive to Goldenhammer. Try as I might to avoid the cliché of describing an album as a ‘journey’, switching the album on really does feel like you’ve climbed in for the titular drive to the fictional ‘Goldenhammer’, a place the band describe as a ‘refuge from the world at large’. Due mostly to the personable rapport the band efficiently manage to have with the listener (a connection created often with little snippets of studio outtakes like laughter at the beginning of the album’s first track), it really does feel as though the listener has been invited onto the band’s road-trip – a road-trip with perhaps one of the most well-curated playlists you’re likely to hear.

Each song blurs the lines between genres and rips up whatever expectations listeners have grasped from their previous tracks. Each song has its own distinct personality as the LP effortlessly leaps between catchy alternative-country, melancholic acoustic, and moody rock. The group manage to tie together all these distinct sounds and expertly steer (not a car joke) between each one at a leisurely pace, leaving enough time for each to leave an impact. Because of this, there is a real sense that there has been a great deal of thought put into the actual structure of the album (as in the order of each song). While the album seems to explore a full spectrum of emotions, none of them come out of the blue. The band structure the album so it avoids giving the listener a sense of whiplash. This is a risk that can be ran when displaying such a range of emotion and it’s a risk that the group manages to avoid well. When the album does come to its more intense moments, it expertly slows down to give the listener room to breathe. This is perhaps most notable in the crescendo at the end of the album’s 4^th track ‘Karen’. The song ends in a claustrophobic combination of thunderous guitars and wailing vocals. As the track ends, guitars echo and feedback ring out, making way for a bass line that seamlessly bounces into the introduction for the 5^th track ‘Jet Show’. That is not to say the group completely takes their foot off the pedal (that one was a car joke) and lets the listener take a break, ‘Jet Show’ is an energetic and adrenaline-pumping romp that has stuck with me as a personal favourite from the album.

The track that perhaps most epitomises the group’s refusal to tie themselves down to a genre is the album’s 9^th, ^‘Pill’. At this stage, we’re far enough into the album that we understand the group are not going to conform to genre, we may even be naive enough to think there is little left they can do to surprise us. ‘Pill’ steps in to let us know how wrong we are. The track begins with a quiet (but still noticeable) oscillating synthesiser, the most electronic the album has been up until this point. Almost as a direct contrast to this, orchestral string stabs are introduced to the song. The song continues surprising, moving from a half-time section with heavy guitars, to one of the band’s main vocalists Tiger Cohen-Towell singing on her own over a piano, and finally finishing on a delightfully calm section where the main focus is on a lone, country-music style, sliding steel guitar. The track feels like a summary of the album’s mission statement, to cross as many genres and emotions as it can, blurring and bending as many lines as it can to create a truly unique listening experience.

It is hard to predict the impact this debut album will have on the Nottingham 4-piece, but it’s safe to say they have established themselves as a group to watch. At the time of writing, the group are showcasing their album with acoustic sets in record shops across the country and are shortly about to embark on a European tour. They have had reviews filled with praise in national newspapers and daytime TV appearances filling the bands schedule just days after the release of the album. Eminently catchy and packed with raw emotion, I’m certain this will be an album that I, and many others, will end the year still replaying over and over.

Written by James Gavin