DIVORCE share new single ‘O Calamity’
UK festivals, UK & US headline tour dates and more upcoming
Debut album Drive to Goldenhammer out now via Gravity / Capitol
Divorce | Photo credit: Flower Up & Rosie Sco
Praise for Divorce and their debut album Drive to Goldenhammer
“a strong early contender for Album of The Year” – The Skinny ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
“Album of the year contender? Undoubtedly.” – Clash ★ ★ ★ ★1/2
“a dynamic, difficult-to-predict listen that gently but deftly rebuts anyone who thinks they know what Divorce are all about.” – DIY ★ ★ ★ ★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 ★ ★ ★ ★
“Felix Mackenzie-Barrow and Tiger Cohen-Towell duet like Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks pre-Fleetwood Mac. Heroic.” – MOJO ★ ★ ★ ★
“Nottingham quartet leave quite the calling card with this confident and ambitious debut” – Music OMH ★ ★ ★ ★
“filled with rich storytelling and contemplative confessionals. An excellent debut.” – Record Collector ★ ★ ★ ★
“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 ★ ★ ★ ★
“a unique blend of pastoral folk, country, and chamber pop.” – BRICKS
“All My Freaks (produced by Wolf Alice/Manchester Orchestra maestro Catherine Marks) zips along on a bed of kaleidoscopic, skittish guitar tones” – Guitar World
“The Nottingham-born band has found a home in their debut album — and it’s open to everyone.” – Hunger
“Awash with satisfying harmonies, their country-chamber-pop exudes familiarity and sophistication to soften that irreverent, punchy lyricism.” –
The Independent
“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
“This is a band that knows themselves, their sound, and one another, inside out.” – London Standard
“They sound much bigger and more arena-ready on ‘My Freaks’, but the band’s knack for warm vocal harmonies and dry-witted lyricism remains wholly intact.” – The Needle Drop
“[‘Antarctica’ is] all hushed Elliott Smith-style vocals and Americana-ish strums” – The New Cue
“it’ll take some miracle for [the album] not to be dominating end of year lists come December.” – NME
“Drive To Goldenhammer displays a depth of the songwriting that feels hard-earned, exciting, and entirely their own.” – The Observer
“While the US has led the new country-tinged wave of indie-rock through the likes of MJ Lenderman, the UK has found its own brilliant scene-leaders in Divorce.” – Rolling Stone UK
“Pensive mellow indie-rock that sits well with the Wilcos and Bon Ivers of our playlists for lazy autumn and winter afternoons.” – Shindig!
“Divorce are poised for even bigger things. If ‘All My Freaks’ is any indication, this album will be a bold, anthemic exploration of identity, home, and the messy, beautiful journey of being an artist.” – So Young
“The best young British band I’ve seen in an age.” – The Spectator
“They’re well worth checking out live at this summer’s festivals.” – The Telegraph
“The East Midlands quartet blend folk and pop to create something both fresh and grounded in the past.” – The Times
“vibrant synths, catchy riffs, and a dash of British irreverence.” – Under The Radar
“The Midlands outfit traverses through idiosyncratic country, grandstand alt rock and gothic chamber pop” – Wonderland
Divorce return today with their first new music since the release of March’s universally acclaimed debut album Drive to Goldenhammer. New single ‘O Calamity’ follows a spring packed with sold out UK shows, including their biggest headline show at London’s KOKO, plus extensive touring throughout Europe. A run of huge shows across the US with Mumford & Sons then followed – the two bands linking up both on and off stage to sing each others songs (watch ‘Antarctica’ here and ‘Awake My Soul’ here), before their first appearances at Glastonbury Festival on the Greenpeace and BBC Introducing stages. The band also performed a stripped back version of former single ‘Antarctica’ for the BBC while at the festival.
With yet more touring through the UK, EU and US before the end of the year, as well as shows in support of Bombay Bicycle Club and The Maccabees, the band shows no sign of slowing down in what is already a breakthrough year for them.
Commenting on the new single, co-vocalist and guitarist Tiger Cohen-Towell says: “O Calamity was written 6 years ago, I recall the vocals for the first verse and chorus came into my head during a shift at the bar I was working at, a pretty standard way that songwriting starts for me even still. Felix and I were performing under a different alias then, so we finished and arranged it together. We always thought it was a beautiful song and kept it in our pile of material, but didn’t include it on the album simply because of how long ago it had been written. This feels like a good time to stop hanging onto it, so here it is; a snapshot of our past written by the two of us, scarcely more than teenagers at the point of creation. It feels like an absolute world away, but good songs never get old.”
Hear Divorce’s debut album Drive to Goldenhammer HERE.
Hear new single ‘O Calamity’ on streaming services here and watch the video below.
Watch the band perform a stripped back version of ‘Antarctica’ for the BBC live from Glastonbury Festival below.
Divorce upcoming live dates 2025
Tickets available here
July 25-28 – Deer Shed Festival, UK
Aug 02 – Humber Street Sesh, Kingston Upon Hill, UK
Aug 03 – Kendall Calling, Penrith, UK
Aug 08 – Ypsigrock Festival, Castelbuono, IT
Aug 17 – Greenman Festival, Crickhowell, UK
Aug 22 – York Barbican, York, UK ^
Aug 23 – Mountford Hall, Liverpool, UK ^
Aug 24 – All Points East, London, UK
Sept 17 – The Rockwell, Somerville, MA, USA
Sep 18 – Elsewhere Zone 1, Kings County, NY, USA
Sep 19 – Pie Shop, Washington, DC, USA
Sep 20 – MilkBoy, Philadelphia, PA, USA
Sep 22 – The Sound Garage, Toronto, ON, CA
Sep 25 – Schubas, Chicago, IL, USA
Sep 27 – Baba Yaga, Seattle, WA, USA
Sep 29 – Brick & Mortar Music Hall, San Francisco, CA, USA
Oct 02 – Gold-Diggers, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Nov 28 – La Belle Angele, Edinburgh, UK
Nov 29 – The Grove, Newcastle, UK
Dec 03 – The Globe, Cardiff, UK
Dec 04 – Papillon, Southampton, UK
Dec 05 – Arts Centre, Norwich, UK
Dec 06 – The Lido, Margate, UK
Dec 09 – Crookes Social Club, Sheffield, UK
Dec 10 – Academy 2, Manchester, UK
Dec 11 – Trinity Centre, Bristol, UK
Dec 13 – Rock City, Nottingham, UK
^ = Supporting Bombay Bicycle Club
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!”
Divorce – ‘O Calamity’ single artwork