Let’s Eat Grandma

Rosa Walton Jenny Hollingworth

one of my lines [on ‘Two Ribbons’]—‘bound to two worlds I can’t feel a part of’—which sums up that sense of trying to communicate with somebody who is no longer here and with the people who are.”

Walton agrees and adds, “When Jenny wrote the lyric, ‘Like two ribbons, still woven although we are fraying,’ it really did encapsulate our own relationship as well as Jenny and Billy’s and some of my own romantic relationships.”

The album is an incredibly moving affair. “Watching You Go,” for example—which is “defnitely about my relationship with Billy,” nods Hollingworth—gives her grief a voice. The lyrics on the sublime “Insect Loop” tackle the dynamic between Hollingworth and Walton as they worked through how to let go of the relationship they once had and embrace the one they now have. Yet even in their darkest moments they still fnd humor. On “Happy New Year” they ask, “Do you think if we’d have been together we’d be breaking up?/I said ‘I’d want the synth.’”

“The synth is our baby, we’ve had it for years,” Walton laughs. “I was imagining a scenario wherein maybe the synth could have a week with Jenny and maybe the weekends with me. I think that was one of the last lines to go on that song, but humor is a coping mechanism.”

Hollingworth laughingly agrees. “There is a level of ridiculousness to it! I mean we both do laugh at things that are a bit fucked up.”

Let’s Eat Grandma have always worked on the production side of their music, having both studied it at college. “At the start of the process [of this album] I still wasn’t quite in the right headspace to write,” concedes Hollingworth, “so Rosa spent a lot of time honing her production skills. She’s really excellent at focusing on something and committing herself to it. We wanted the production to be almost like a color palette in the sense that certain sounds bring different emotional colours to the record.”

Walton concurs. “The production is very much linked to how I write,” she says. “For example, on ‘Hall of Mirrors’ the production is used to accentuate the lyrics, the futtering arpeggiators are used to represent emotion like that heart-futtering feeling or by adding delay to represent the refections in the mirrors.”

Two Ribbons sees the duo experimenting with a diverse range of instrumentation, mixing analogue synths with digital production as they collaborated with David Wrench, the primary producer of I’m All Ears. It’s an album that has a natural ebb and fow and skilfully mixes sparkling electronic dance foor fllers with a gentler acoustic guitar led sound. The more refective moments were partly inspired by Hollingworth seeking solace in nature.

“I could see the cycle of things,” she explains, “things being born and dying and the connection between it all.”

It’s a bold album that demonstrates how much they have progressed as artists since their experimental debut album, 2016’s I, Gemini.

“I suppose there was an element of us taking the piss a little bit,” Walton says of their debut, “but we were just having fun.”

“Our frst album was a bit weird and I can almost understand why some people didn’t like it,” laughs Hollingworth. “In retrospect it probably makes more sense if you listen to our other albums frst.”

Even though their relationship has changed over the years, both musicians feel this has had a positive impact on the musical evolution of Let’s Eat Grandma. “I think it’s helped us develop and think outside the box,” says Hollingworth, “and despite the ups and downs and the challenges life throws at us I do think we’ve produced something creatively satisfying, which in turn has helped us work through our own issues.”

“We had to accept that as we grew up our relationship had changed, which I think is actually healthy, because above everything else we are just best mates.”

– Jenny Hollingworth