But in some ways it wasn’t untrue as well. The whole twins thing was definitely accentuated. And from between the ages of four and up until our issues we were bound at the hair. “We were close from a young age,” says Walton. “Because you know you’ll always be my best friend.” But there’s a devastating counter punch from Hollingworth, who wonders, “Do you think if we’d have been together we’d be breaking up?” “Nothing that was broken, can touch how much I care for you” sings Walton to Hollingworth. But, as they sing on the recent single Happy New Year, they’re older now and the dynamic has shifted. They had always thought of each other as virtual sisters. They were also the best act at Electric Picnic 2019, delivering a sparkling set even as Hollingworth reckoned with her grief. And basking in superlative reviews, with Rolling Stone hailing the pair “indie pop dynamite” and Pitchfork praising their “kaleidoscopic production” and the way it “swirled into marvellous breathtaking songs”. After blazing a trail in Norwich, they came to the attention of London indie label Transgressive, and were soon touring with artists such as Julia Jacklin and Marika Hackman. Let’s Eat Grandma started when Hollingworth and Walton began experimenting with guitars, laptops and keyboards at school. That’s one of the things that isn’t said enough about it’ Let’s Eat Grandma: ‘Grief is extremely confusing. With all of that, I don’t know who wouldn’t have had problems.” It was a really difficult time in our personal lives. “There is a lot of pressure related to being in a band with someone. And when you’re a band working with your best friend – that’s a recipe for lots of pressures at work,” says Walton. Inseparable since childhood, as adults in their 20s they have grown apart and started to go their own ways. Yet if it’s hard to believe they would ever exchange a cross word, let alone have a serious falling out, a cooling in their relationship is another of the themes of Two Ribbons. It isn’t that they finish one another’s sentences – more that they seem genuinely rapt by and respectful of what the other is saying. Zooming in from separate locations, Hollingworth (in Norwich) and bandmate Rosa Walton (in the London flat she shares with her boyfriend) have perfect best friend energy. In many ways, I think some of the songs are just expressing feeling disorientated.” Trying to make sense of it in a song was really difficult.
That’s one of the things that isn’t said enough about it. Every time I tried to write a song it would just come back. “Every time I tried to write a song, it kind of boiled down to one or two words, like ‘watching you go’. He passed way at a hospital in Cambridge, two days after Hollingworth’s final visit. Her first boyfriend, he had been diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma, a rare cancerous tumour that grows in the bones or surrounding soft tissue.
“I knew I had these songs to write,” says Hollingworth of the process of negotiating the loss of Clayton. One that ultimately ends up on a place of hope and optimism.
Coming out hard album tracks how to#
Powered by spooky beats and bruised off-centre melodic instincts, it is in part a mediation on bereavement and how to get through it. Two Ribbons builds on the psychedelic synth-pop Hollingworth and bandmate/best friend Rosa Walton perfected across two previous albums, having started Let’s Eat Grandma as bored teenagers in Norwich. Hollingworth sings about Clayton – his life, his death, the people he left behind – on Let’s Eat Grandma’s haunting and emotionally eviscerating new record.
That’s one of the things that isn’t said enough about it “Some of them really quite difficult, actually. “Those Chvrches songs that they played every night bring back so many memories for me,” says Hollingworth. Clayton, an up-and-coming singer-songwriter, would pass away on March 29th of that year, aged 22. It brings her back to one of the most painful and challenging times of her life: a spring 2019 tour of Ireland and the UK opening for Chvrches, which coincided with the latter stages of her boyfriend Billy Clayton’s treatment for cancer. To this day, whenever Let’s Eat Grandma’s Jenny Hollingworth hears a song by the Scottish electronic band Chvrches, she find herself fighting tears.
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