Album Review: Divorce - 'Drive to Goldenhammer'
Yearning debut from Nottingham-based alt-country/indie quartet Divorce plays homage to place and home.
This one has been circulating for a while since its release was heard on the streets of the 0114. Set as Nottingham's poster child, Divorce's debut album has been a long time coming.
Formed after a quarter life crisis in 2021, their first role was setting standards in terms of sound. We were met with Get Mean the year following, its crunchy guitar and warming vocals a soon-to-be-staple. Heady Metal joined the fray with the four really finding their writing pen in alternative-country territory with Eat My Words. Since then, the group have come on leaps and bounds, leaning in to their Midlands identity as they capped off last year with a four-night residency at the Bodega in Nottingham before finalising a London date at Islington's Academy Hall.
This year saw the band take it up a gear or two with their enigmatic lead All My Freaks - a sprawling synth-fest in a jest to themselves as musicians as they peruse for public approval. Set as the first offering, the record itself follows a similar thesis. Drive to Goldenhammer is a warming alt-country listen dolling out themes of playful transformation and escape to a fantasy land of Goldenhammer, a welcoming refuge from the big scary world at large where for musicians, identity and approval is everything.
In short, Goldenhammer is a home that doesn't really exist. But if any rom com from the noughties told us one thing: a home is what you make it.
Above all else, the driving force of the record are those vocals. The call-and-response pockets of Tiger Cohen-Towell and Felix Mackenzie-Barrow throughout are certainly the albums' anchor points; a tethering moment to hold on and keep driving. Tiger and Felix have been writing lyrics together since they were teenagers and it's easy to see that here. The record certainly feels lived-in, almost like these ideas have been festering for a while - the surmise here is that they've finally been allowed to air out their grievances.
Lord - another anthemic tug on the strings - tracts imagery of a seahorse when contemplating sexual desire. While Pill is perhaps the bands' most unconventionally arranged tracks on the record, a playful thrill interspersed into three separate sections. Divorce here have transcended the art of a debut and almost leaned into this weird playfulness, with no overthinking mustered in its making - which can be no easy feat with the weight of the industry bearing down on you. Then there's blooming heavyweight Antarctica; a compounding story picked up at the end of a relationship, almost as if the reasonings need laying out.
Elsewhere, Karen dabbles into the bands' grunge territory, a ferocious requiem into devastation. While Old Broken String, a folk fiddle ode to storytelling, is a beautiful saving grace in feeling seen. A record that never wishes to sit still - in neither sound or genre it finds itself in - Drive to Goldenhammer is a momentous moment for Midlands music. It is meticulously crafted and expertly sewn by a band revelling in heartfelt tenderness, knowing all too well that these feelings may come to pass. It's a story we know all too well and it's presented here in absolute brilliance.
Drive to Goldenhammer has seen the band go from local punters to domestic greats that will no doubt result in a mammoth year for them. The albums' tour with a few in-singings followed by a few city markers in Manchester and Dublin, before hitting Europe in April.
Words by Alex Curle
