Time is not a commodity the band have enjoyed in abundance. Since 2023, they’ve played 214 gigs, shot a short film, and graced the front row of Paris Fashion Week. So when on earth did they write their second album?
“We had four months at the start of this year where we didn’t really play any shows,” says bassist Georgia Davies, “so we were recording then”.
“But when people are like, ‘When did you write the album?’ The answer is basically, over Christmas.”
That doesn’t paint the full picture, however, says Abigail.
Some of the songs on From The Pyre “have been in the dressing-up box, waiting to come out,” since the band formed in 2021.
The Scythe, external, a sumptuously wounded ballad released as the album’s second single, goes even further back.
“I wrote the chorus when I was 16 or 17,” says Abigail.
“I knew it was really good, but the rest of the song wasn’t right, so I kept it in reserve until the right time.”
Abigail originally wrote The Scythe about a teenage break-up. It was only when her sister heard it and commented on the lyrics that she realised it was really a rumination on death.
“My father passed away when I was a teenager,” she says, “and that kind of loss takes a long time to get your head around – even when you’re in therapy and you’re talking about it”.
She resisted the temptation to make the lyrics more explicitly autobiographical, reasoning that grief and heartache are intrinsically linked.
“When you have a big heartbreak, in my experience, it’s exactly the same bodily response as someone dying, which I think is really crazy. Your body doesn’t know the difference. And that’s really interesting, I think, to write about in a song.”
Perhaps, I suggest, the link is especially strong for someone who’s lost a parent at a young age. Every subsequent loss is refracted through that lens.
“Yeah, the body keeps score,” she agrees.
“I think if you experience a trauma in your childhood or teenhood, it takes a really long time to repair. You might feel fine and well-adjusted and able to go through life, but you don’t respond to things in the same way as someone who hasn’t been through those experiences. It’s all stored up on a molecular level.”