FEATURE:
Spotlight
mary in the junkyard
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LIKE I did fairly recently…
when writing about The Last Dinner Party for Spotlight, I am capturing mary in the junkyard on their debut single. It is always interesting expressing your feelings and impressions of a group from the very first song. Things will change and evolve with the trio. Comprising guitarist and vocalist Clari Freeman-Taylor, bassist and viola player Saya Barbaglia, and drummer David Addison, I think that there are big things ahead for mary in the junkyard. Whether they remain as a trio, or Freeman-Taylor and Barbaglia remain as a duo, I am not too sure. The group’s debut single, Tuesday, has been getting quite a bit of buzz. It is a song that announced them as one of the most interesting and promising new bands around! Seeing where they go from here and how they develop will be compelling. I will get to that song soon. First, in August, Loud and Quiet spent time with the group. This was even before they released their debut single. Spotlighting them on the cusp of stepping into the music industry! There is an originality and high standard to their music and lyrics that have already seen them acquire a loyal fanbase:
“While they’re yet to release music, their DIY punk riffs, accented by Joni Mitchell-inspired poeticism and Björk’s whimsy, see them regularly draw in crowds at much-loved South London venue The Windmill – a second home to them. “I like that other people see us and associate us with it because it’s such a wonderful place,” she says. “It’s very authentic. Tim [Perry – head booker and promoter] doesn’t care about profit, he just cares about putting really great music on and he’s been really nurturing. We owe him a lot.” A fertile community that has fostered a new generation of guitar bands, the DIY label is one that Mary as a group wear proudly. “I think we’re quite unprofessional,” says Clari. “I don’t really feel like a guitarist, I play with my hand rather than a pick.” Preferring to give way to happy accidents rather than a deeply methodical approach, there is a beautiful rawness not only to their sound but also the writing. “We don’t try to be anything. We just do what feels good.”
And what feels good to them is just about everything. That’s the beauty of Mary. “Everything we do feels very chaotic. I think we all have a lot of energy to give to it,” Clari chuckles. “It’s pretty sporadic, but it kind of works. Sometimes it feels just like everything is falling into place.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Sam Walton
Clari and Saya both having classical backgrounds, and while symphonic parallels aren’t what first come to mind when you think of angsty rock bands, the expansiveness of the classical genre is apparent in their creative approach, with Saya sometimes adding viola parts to their performances. “It’s a really cool layer,” Clari says. “We’re a trio but we’re trying to figure out how much we can do with that. It’s probably good for us creatively to have to figure out how to do things just with us.”
They are sometimes accompanied by Brian, too – a large paper mache head, who is also lurking around during our interview today. He’s yet to earn his stripes as an officially christened fourth member of a band, but his presence is indicative of the playfulness that underpins Mary as a collective. “I just think he’s funny,” Clari laughs. “We want to have a bare bones kind of vibe, like paper mache. But the main reason he’s here today is because he was in Saya’s room for a while. She wants me to take him home!”
It’s unclear if Brian will remain a constant, but one thing Clari is sure of is that Mary In The Junkyard are set to release music soon; yet part of her is reluctant. “It’s nice to not have music out, it makes us kind of mysterious and cool,” she laughs. “I’ll be sad to lose that.” Pointing to the loyal fanbase that has already been built, the mild trepidation is understandable. “Because people can’t listen to our music really easily, they have to work a bit harder. They’ve got to seek us out”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Sam Walton
Played and championed by the likes of BBC Radio 6 Music, it is clear that mary in the junkyard have the promise and potential to go a very long way. I really love what they are doing! Their experimental sound means you can never predict where a song goes. Tuesday starts in one place. It winds and mutates into something different. NME recently put the trio under their radar. They can definitely detect something amazing in them. Expect mary in the junkyard to be suitably huge very soon:
“On a cloudless August afternoon, the fields of Glanusk Estate – home to Green Man Festival – look like a picture of bliss. As they prepare for their NME photoshoot, the members of Mary In The Junkyard attempt to scale a small oak tree while discussing the festival’s vast and eccentric activity offerings, from willow weaving to charcoal making. The harmony of the scene is spoiled only by dozens of muddy puddles, the last remaining evidence of the weekend’s heavy rainfall.
The music of this experimental rock trio – comprising guitarist and vocalist Clari Freeman-Taylor, bassist and viola player Saya Barbaglia and drummer David Addison – would find a fitting backdrop in this sprawling and dramatic festival site. Their debut single ‘Tuesday’ plays like a slowburn to a frenzied finale: staccato guitar and Freeman-Taylor’s whisper-like vocal meld with a careening intensity before reaching a two-minute crescendo. The track is both fragile and fearless at once, swooping between devastating new depths with the same quiet ferocity of caroline‘s self-titled debut or Crack Cloud’s ‘Pain Olympics’.
For Freeman-Taylor and Addison, ‘Tuesday’ represents a “new era” of their lives. Prior to forming Mary In The Junkyard with Barbaglia, whom Freeman-Taylor met at a youth orchestra, the pair were part of Second Thoughts and had garnered a devoted social media following during those long, desolate days of lockdown. With a Discord channel and multiple meme accounts dedicated to the indie-rock group, plus a 100,000-strong TikTok audience, the online attention often overshadowed the music itself, Freeman-Taylor says today. “The TikTok stuff felt like hysteria,” she adds, twiddling with a handful of leaves as she speaks. “What we’re doing here is trying to be the complete opposite of that. Because we fucking hated it.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Marieke Macklon
Your music has a real sense of spontaneity. Does it feel like a bit of an escape from the classical worlds you grew up in?
Clari: “Totally, but Saya is also an incredibly talented classical musician. She can play beautifully over anything I write. The bassline at the end of ‘Tuesday’ is really honky-tonky, and I wasn’t expecting it! Saya and I used to play in string quartets together, and a massive part of that is about being able to read each other – it helped us to bond in such a special way. I think being a three-piece allows us to keep that focus.”
Saya: “I don’t play classical music often anymore, but the passion – in the same way a lot of people may feel about sports – will always be there. When we play live, as I don’t sing, I’m often jumping around the stage, which is new for me. It’s been freeing.”
What does being in Mary In The Junkyard offer you that your previous projects didn’t?
Clari: “We were just like, ‘We have to do this or we’ll explode.’ David and I were really young when we were in the other band and I think we did a lot of stuff that we didn’t really want to do. All the numbers popped up on social media and they didn’t mean anything to us.”
David: “I think now we are really learning how to play live and be there for each other. I love these guys and feel excited by what we are making. Looking back at what happened before, and that tricky period of time, feels really weird”.
I will finish with a feature that spotlights Tuesday. Loud Women are already fans of mary in the junkyard. I am not sure what sure what the situation is relating to live dates. Keep an eye on their Instagram feed for details and their next moves. There is going to be so much demand around the country follow the release of the amazing Tuesday:
“mary in the junkyard emerge today with their anticipated debut single and video ‘Tuesday’ on AMF Records.
The band is guitarist and vocalist Clari Freeman-Taylor, bassist and viola player Saya Barbaglia and drummer David Addison.
‘Tuesday’ – written by the band, produced by Yuri Shibuichi and mixed and mastered by Nathan Boddy – is a mesmerising first statement from mary in the junkyard which delivers on the promise of their live shows and then some. Accompanied by a characterful and visually striking music video – directed by the band themselves – ‘Tuesday’ conveys chaotic feelings induced by city loneliness and climaxes in positively Lynchian fashion.
True to the band’s boundless creative vision, the ‘Tuesday’ artwork – featuring the video’s lead character, a Yeti – was hand-painted by Freeman-Taylor. The video itself stems from her initial concept, too. Speaking about ‘Tuesday’, Freeman-Taylor said:
“I wrote ‘Tuesday’ when I was first experiencing life in a city and was feeling very small. It’s so easy to be swept along with the bustle and noise and feel like a worker ant amidst thousands of others. I wanted to write about my yearning for chaos and realness – we all have wildness within us that we might be suppressing and we shouldn’t feel like aliens because of it”.
A fascinating trio that have made such a clear impact with Tuesday, there are going to be a load of eyes on them. I can see them being very much in demand at festivals next year. How they move from here is up to the trio. I suspect there will be more singles and an E.P. at some point. Right now, with Tuesday in the ether, they have made this incredible first move! If you have not heard of mandy in the junkyard, then I would urge you to…
HEAD their way.
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