Divorce Strike Gold In LA Tour Debut
- Josh Kitchen
- 2 days ago
- 11 min read
By: Josh Kitchen / March 27, 2026
Sitting across from Felix Mackenzie-Barrow and Tiger Cohen-Towell of Nottingham band Divorce, you wouldn’t know they had just wrapped an interview with Sir Elton John, who told them their debut record, Drive to Goldenhammer, currently sits as Disc 1 in his five-disc CD player at home.
The band is about to play the first Los Angeles show of their career, fresh off support dates with Sam Smith in San Francisco — a city they’re heading right back to in the morning for their own headlining show. If you’re a fan of bands like Black Country, New Road, Geese, or Alvvays, there’s a good chance you’ve seen Divorce’s name on curated playlists. They’re bubbling up at a moment when their brand of authentic, dreamy alt-rock feels especially vital.
With electric and acoustic guitar interplay, poetic and open-ended lyrics, and a clear sense of identity, Divorce are carving out a sound that feels familiar without ever being derivative. Felix and Tiger trade lead vocals across heavy tracks like “Jet Show” and “Pill,” breezy singalongs like “Hangman,” and introspective standouts like “Antarctica” and “Lord.”
It’s no surprise Elton is paying attention — and he’s not alone. A deluxe edition of Drive to Goldenhammer arrived last fall, followed by a new version of “Antarctica” featuring Marcus Mumford, along with the recent praise from Sam Smith after bringing the band out on tour. Sitting with Felix and Tiger, what stands out most is how grounded they are. Felix in a blue button-up, Tiger jokingly fussing with hairspray before they go on — they’re as unpretentious as it gets. It’s a dynamic that traces back to when they met (along with bandmates Adam Peter-Smith and
Kasper Sandstrom) at The Television Workshop - an acting school in Nottingham, England: normal. And that’s what makes Divorce so refreshing. Balancing rising attention and interviews with legends with playing smaller rooms is something they take in stride. “The funny thing is balancing that with playing a show to 20 people. It’s humbling, but it’s also life,” Felix tells me.
That perspective carries into how they approach performing. “You’re there to make people feel good. That’s why they came,” Tiger says. “It doesn’t have to change your life, but it can. I’ve had my life changed by gigs before. It’s that awareness — of both opportunity and responsibility — that makes Divorce’s arrival feel so vital. They know they have a rare ability to change your life. Not every band arrives to that clarity, but Divorce has fresh out of the gate. Later that night at Gold-Diggers in Los Angeles, they proved it. I was glad to be there, soaking it all in.
Drive To Goldenhammer has been out for about a whole year now. How does it feel already letting it seep in this way?
Felix: I mean, it feels great. We were sat on that record for the best part of a year anyway, so for us it’s been a lot longer. But obviously, to have released it—we released it March 7 last year—it’s been a really lovely journey. It’s taken us to a lot of places that we didn’t expect it to. It feels like—we’ve had a really lovely reception on it from a lot of people, and it kind of keeps—when you put a record out in the world, it kind of takes on a life of its own. You notice certain songs being picked up by fans, or different things get a focus at different times. That’s really nice.
Drive To Goldenhammer - the title itself feels full of action, forward motion. It’s really cool to hear you talk about it becoming something more than when you wrote it. How does it change from when you conceived it to now?
Tiger: I think it really, in its nature, felt like a transient thing. Our lives were very full-on when we recorded that album, and everything moved very quickly with the band after we started it, which we’re very grateful for. But it meant that we were like, okay, we’ve got to get our shit together—album. We just threw everything we had. Everything felt like it was truly happening on the go, and that’s why we landed on that name. Since we’ve released it, we’re playing it for people and hearing—I’m kind of a big believer in the subconscious, and what sometimes just comes to you in a fleeting moment can be extremely relevant to the experience you’re having. And so to see people and hear people’s feedback on the songs and how they’ve resonated with them, and then reflect back on your own life when you were writing and be like, that is truly perceptive—you’re a lot more in touch with what you’re feeling in any given moment. And that comes out in songs. I think that emotion of the album—it felt grounded by people hearing it and feeding that back. Songs that you even get tired of playing, people really breathe life back into them, and that’s special.
Some of the lyrics—“I’m a seahorse, I need a little sugar," or my favorite, "You have to be awake to see a nocturne, but I’ve never seen the night.” Lyrics like these are so poetic. I think it’s more interesting to talk about what inspires you day-to-day rather than just musical influences.
Felix: I think there’s kind of a trend toward aboutness in songwriting, probably pushed by social media and trying to make it as a musician. The idea of condensing what a song is about into a quick snippet you can say at the start of an acoustic video. A lot of the music we make just doesn’t work like that. I can’t fit that stuff, and I have no interest in doing that. I’m quite proud that we let the song guide it. I’m not overly fussed with what a song is about. There are songs I still don’t entirely know what they’re about—I can’t sum them up in words. That’s why I wrote the song. You write the song because you can’t explain it.
And that’s what’s special about your music—you feel it. People don’t ask what a riff means, they just feel it. Lyrics are the same way.
Felix: Yeah. Any song you get attached to in a language you don’t speak—you can still feel so much emotion.
I think about Bad Bunny at the Super Bowl this year.
Tiger: Exactly—the language barrier shouldn’t change how it makes you feel. It’s about feel, vulnerability, performance. If you’re honest and people don’t like it, you can’t do anything about that. I don’t see the point of explaining something too much.
And that doesn’t mean what you’re saying isn’t deeply personal. You talk about queer identity in“Pill,” and in "Wendolene," use a term which I love— your “council of shame.” I feel like everyone has their own council of shame they deal with.
Tiger: That song was really fun to write because it was almost spoken. I don’t do that very often, so it was a nice break. We used it on the deluxe as a chance to break away from things we’d done before. It’s quite an absurd song. The name came from a Wallace & Gromit character, but the song doesn’t really have anything to do with that. “Council of shame” is just funny. Sometimes wordplay feels right, and then you derive meaning later—feelings of guilt and shame that everybody has. It’s just a funny way of explaining that.
What’s your favorite Wallace & Gromit short?
Tiger: The Wrong Trousers.
Felix: Depends what mood I’m in. I know them all so well. I do think The Wrong Trousers—it gets dark. I think something about the feel of those early Wallace and Gromit films has really permeated our brains as children and found its way into everything we do. I love the roughness of those things and the realness of them. You can see that it’s plasticine. There’s a real darkness to it and a kind of uncanny nature that you can’t really achieve with CGI. It’s strange.
And that’s what I’m talking about—those kinds of influences and life experiences seeping into your art, even inspiring something like a song title. Felix, talk to me about the Television Workshop.
Felix: Oh yeah. We met there when we were teenagers. I was only in it for a couple of years.
Tiger: You made a very big impact in that time.
Felix: I always found that because I played music, I would end up—at that point in my life I wanted to be an actor and just do acting, but every time I tried, I’d get given the actor-musician part, which used to do my head in a bit. But yeah, TV Workshop was great. It’s how we met a lot of our friends in Nottingham. It was kind of indirectly how we met Kasper and Adam as well.
Tiger: It was a very important social activity for us as teenagers. It was really a kind of scene of all kinds of creative people. A lot of people didn’t go on to be actors but became creatives. It was interesting, and for it being based in Nottingham, it was a place recognized by the industry. When you come from a provincial place like that, the industry feels unfathomable. The music industry felt like a mystery to us for a long time. But being around talented people is affirming and gives you confidence. When you get approval from them, it’s formative. I joined when I was 11, so it was a really great thing to be exposed to.
Felix: I was working as an actor for a couple of years, and then I kept finding that when I was going up for parts, if there was even the sniff of something that would pay more than working in a bar or café, I was like, maybe I could save and make an album. Then I was like, this is stupid—I’m just going to have one really dumb career.
Do you find that being in a band like this is like acting a little bit? Do you wear a mask, or is this just you?
Tiger: Yeah, you kind of have to, to some degree. There have been varying degrees of that through the history of the band. When we started, we had a big persona. I think this happens with artists—you start and commit to a bit, and then over time it becomes exhausting and you become more nuanced. You show parts of yourself and hide others. As a stage performer, you develop a self-preservation technique. But I think our fans like the genuine personality coming through.
They like it. I’ll speak for the fans.
Tiger: Yeah, we don’t do it too much.
Felix: It comes and goes depending on the environment. Touring is very social—you’re meeting people constantly, you’re “on” all the time. So you develop a bit of an outer shell to hold onto your sanity.
You’ve worked with some very cool people now. You just did shows with Sam Smith. You have Marcus Mumford recording “Antarctica” with you. You did the Elton interview—that’s wild. Talk to me about that.
Tiger: It’s really surreal getting to a stage where you meet people who are very established. That level of fame is quite abstract. Elton John—I don’t think you get more famous than that. We met him on Zoom for five minutes, so it was brief, but he was really lovely. It left an impact on us. He’s very passionate about upcoming acts. He has a lot of time for smaller artists. He told us he plays our CD at his house and that we’re one of only five CDs he has. Hearing Elton John say that is crazy. I love his music. What he’s contributed to culture - he transcends everything. He’s both eclectic in his tastes, but also extremely accessible to the point nobody can deny that he’s so good. It’s just funny.
Felix: It’s funny because you meet these people—like Marcus as well—and it’s so genuine. With Elton, he just heard our music and wanted to lift it up and invite us to play shows. The funny thing is balancing that with playing a show to 20 people. It’s humbling, but it’s also life. There are a lot of bands at this level. You’re not a superstar. There are plenty of things that keep your feet on the ground. It’s funny trying to mentally juggle those two worlds, but there’s something really beautiful about that sometimes.
I think people who listen to your music can feel that duality in their own lives too. There are big moments and more insular ones. I love Bruce Springsteen—he says before a show there’s nothing in the air, and it’s your job to pull magic out of nothing. You and the audience create that together.
Felix: And actually, that’s acting. That’s when acting comes in. You can’t do that every night. I agree with Springsteen—it’s our job to make the audience feel like we’re plucking magic out of the sky every night. But sometimes you have a cold or you’re really sad about something. The trick is learning how to make that energy feel like it’s there, even if it’s not in your heart at that moment. That’s the skill.
Tiger: It’s kind of funny. I think the people who are true masters of that are the ones who’ve learned it over time. It’s not easy. I don't think that we've haven’t nailed it. We did a European tour last year that was amazing in a lot of ways, but there were shows where not many people were there, and we were tired—really tired.
Felix: It's like, this is ruining my body.
Tiger: You feel like, can I do this? It’s physically hard. You want to show up and be there, and then I think about people who are big, they're famous, they have the audience, and they've done it for many years. And, you know, becoming the idea of becoming numb to that..at the moment, when we have a really special show and a lot of people show up, you can’t help but feel great. You’ve worked really hard, there are a lot of people here, they've come to hear us - this is special. It doesn’t happen every night. Then you think about people where it does happen every night, and there are layers to getting used to that. You have to maintain gratitude, because there are people who work so hard and don’t even get to come to play America. But you’re also a person. You have to show up on stage and not be off, because there’s nothing worse than watching someone having a strop on stage. I’ve done it—not a strop, but being off and going into myself. I think the more I do this, the more I’m like, stop taking yourself so fucking seriously. Who cares?! These people are going to make more of a thing of it, if you're showing how annoyed you are on stage. Like, okay, I'm out of tune, who cares!
That’s the magic of live music. People don’t care if you have to tune—they’re there with you.
Tiger: Honestly, that’s the biggest lesson, and it takes ages to learn as a musician.
And the fact that you’re talking about it and recognizing it—that’s the work.
Tiger: Sometimes, it’s really hard, but you’ve got to try. Because if you don't try, everyone is going to think you're a knob.
Some artists never figure that out.
Felix: We keep each other motivated to figure that out. We owe it to each other as bandmates and to the people we work with—tour manager, manager, sound engineer, photographer—everyone putting in the hard yards with us everyday. People pay for tickets and that's amazing. I’m not mowing lawns right now, so I have to stay grateful.
Tiger: Nobody’s asking you to be perfect. You’re just human. But you can be self-aware.I think think that's the one thing - you can't can't always be on point.
The art suffers if you try to be perfect all the time. You have to let accidents happen.
Felix: Totally. The first Sam Smith show we did, I walked on stage and my guitar just wasn’t working. It was a rental. We got it thinking it would be more reliable than my old guitar, and it was the one that failed. But the audience doesn’t care. They just want you to play at some point. I’m stressed out—just play the songs.
Tiger: I just think the world is such a dark place right now. Your fucking show doesn’t matter—you’re there to make people feel good. That’s why they came. It’s therapeutic to see people giving it a go and trying to make art. It’s just nice. It's life-affirming. It doesn’t have to change your life, seeing a gig, but I have had my life changed by them.
Comments