- 2022-05-12
-
MUSIC
-
Let's Eat Grandma Releases New Album “Two Ribbons”: Streaming
British synth-pop duo Let's Eat Grandma, consisting of Rosa Walton and Jenny Hollingworth, released their third studio album “Two Ribbons” on April 29, 2022 via Transgressive Records.
It is their first album in four years since the 2018 album “I'm All Ears”.
The duo shared on social media, “We finished this album a long time ago and it feels really special to finally have these songs out in the world. We worked over the past couple of years with the wonderfulDavid Wrench to piece this together, and are so proud of the outcome - we really hope these songs resonate with you.”
The album comprises 10-track, all tracks are written by Rosa Walton and Jenny Hollingworth and produced by David Wrench.
The album is about the duo's personal ordeals. Three years ago, Jenny Hollingworth's boyfriend and singer Billy Clayton died at just 22 from a rare form of bone cancer.
His death obviously impacts on the new album, they wrote the album's songs separately for the first time in their collaboration.
Jenny Hollingworth told Jack Saunders of BBC Radio 1, “We did. Basically, because of the circumstances surrounding the album. Because my boyfriend passed away just before we started writing. I didn't really feel up to writing a record yet. And Rosa was very much in her writing mode. So it started very differently for us were writing the songs individually that we did, allowed us to kind of express things to each other that we hadn't been able to say in words. And as a result, it kind of helped to heal our relationship so that eventually we ended up sort of finishing each other's songs and and pulling it together into a record.”- Also she said the album is infueced by Swedish singer-songwriter Robyn. “Well, there's been quite a lot of influences really, but I guess one that's kind of been throughout our career but also in terms of making some of the bigger pot moments this album I would say probably Robyn the way that she takes these very lonely and isolated experiences that people have and kind of puts them through the medium of pop music which is such an immediate type of music like you hear it and it's got the hooks in it immediately makes you want to dance.”
Rosa Walton and Jenny Hollingworth explained track-by-track for the album via Apple Music.
“Happy New Year”
Rosa Walton: “I actually started writing this with the intention of it being for the Cyberpunk 2077 game but, in the end, the brief for that was so specific, and I wrote a different track instead. I had the main hook chords for this and then I just sung the words 'best friend' and I was like, 'Oh, wait, I know what this should be about.' I had loads of things that felt really pressing to write about mine and Jenny's relationship and looking back on that in a nostalgic way and also looking forward to a new chapter. It made sense to use the metaphor of New Year because it's often a time when you do that.”
“Levitation”
Rosa Walton: “This was written about the surreal mental state of feeling detached from reality, in a way that you almost feel high, and there's positives about it, but then also it can be really scary and alienating. I wanted to write about two sides of that. It's one that we both sing, and Jenny brought lyrics to it later in the process.”
“Watching You Go”
Jenny Hollingworth: “I wanted to make something that reflected the pent-up emotion of grief and the kind of tension that you feel when you're in a lot of confusion and distress. The way that the song's built, there aren't really clear chords through most of it; it's very bass-led and kind of churning and then, at the end, there's this big guitar release. It represents, to me, just how difficult I found it at the time to express myself. There's a lot of nature imagery on the record because a lot of the record was written spending a huge amount of time outside. This one looks at the images of beauty but also the horror of nature at the same time.”
“Hall of Mirrors”
Rosa Walton: “This was very production-led in that the shiny, bright metallic sounds came before any of the lyrics or the story. They almost informed the lyrics, in a way. The idea of writing about the hall of mirrors came from the image of the shiny, delayed synth sounds that were like reflections in a mirror, and then from there I realized that I wanted to write a song about my sexuality, which I hadn't written about before. That was something that I felt like, at that point, I was ready to talk about in a song and the many different emotions in relation to that. I knew that I wanted it to be an uplifting and positive song, but then, in the same way, there's a lot of secrecy and guilt mixed in there as well. I knew that I wanted to keep it a dance-pop song at the core.” -
“Insect Loop”
Rosa Walton: “This one is very painful and a raw, emotional song. I see it in sections, and all of the sections represent different facets of how you feel about a person. There's anger, there's guilt, there's tenderness in the middle section, and then a release at the end, and we used the production to build that. The end section I imagine as being set on a beach: The big, reverb-y, distorted guitars are like the crashing waves. Both of us are really influenced by our environment and influenced by the Norfolk coastline and the Norfolk countryside.”
“Half Light”
Rosa Walton: “This was written as a segue between 'Insect Loop' and 'Sunday' because they're both very heavy, emotionally intense songs, and we felt like we needed to put in a breather there.”
“Sunday”
Rosa Walton: “I started writing this one at the beginning of lockdown. I was about to break up with my boyfriend at the time and it was written ahead of that, as a kind of way to prepare myself for the break-up. I really wanted to write something very warm-sounding, which is interesting with it being about a break-up. The warmness was like a longing for how I wanted to feel and how I once felt in the relationship. I think there's something extra sad about that. A lot of the sounds are very delicate and fragile, and also just really pretty. Again, there's something really sad about using those sounds in a way which is about something which is ending.”
“In the Cemetery”
Rosa Walton: “This was a track that Jenny had started, and then I wrote a bit of instrumental around it and then put in some shitty recordings of birds off the internet, and then Jenny went to the cemetery and recorded actual birds. Again, we just felt like we needed to have something in there that just created a bit of space and a break from the high volumes of lyrics.”
“Strange Conversations”
Jenny Hollingworth: “It's complicated to talk about this because I feel like a lot of the lyrics are mysterious, even to me. I think when Billy passed away, it made me think a lot about spirituality, not in the literal sense of religion, but just in terms of meaning and what happens when we die, and you are quite confronted with that aspect of life in a way that you're not previously. It not only represents a conversation with either some sort of higher power or a god, but also the questions that you have for the person that you love who's passed away, and the way that your relationship continues even when they've passed away. I guess the strangeness of it is the fact that it's obviously one-sided and that you can't actually get the answers that you're looking for.”
“Two Ribbons”
Jenny Hollingworth: “It wasn't immediately obvious to me as a closer, but it made sense as the record came together because it just felt like it had a mood that was difficult to bounce back from. It also ended up creating a kind of circular, because 'Happy New Year' is almost like a response to 'Two Ribbons.' Ending on 'Two Ribbons' and then starting again with 'Happy New Year,' it's almost like you hear the songs differently the second time you listen on loop because of the context of this song.” - source : Apple Music
