Talking with Tiger Cohen-Towell of Divorce, the excitement around their debut album, Drive to Golden Hammer, is still fresh. The Nottingham-formed band—fronted by the dual songwriting forces of Tiger and Felix Mackenzie-Barrow—has been carving out a space for themselves in the indie-folk landscape, blending alt-country, shoegaze, and raw, introspective storytelling. The album, released to critical acclaim (not least by us) is as much about movement—both literal and emotional—as it is about finding home in the transient.
“You never really know what to expect, especially with a debut,” Tiger tells me, reflecting on the album’s reception. “It’s been overwhelming in the best way. You can get caught up in reviews—no offense,” she adds with a laugh, “but when people come up to us after shows and tell us what the songs mean to them, that’s priceless.”
The band’s songwriting approach is refreshingly instinctive. “We didn’t go in with a concept—we just wrote what we were feeling at the time. But somehow, it all tied together,” she explains. That organic cohesion comes through in standout tracks like Antarctica, a song inspired by a near-miss with a calf on the road, and Karen, an album track that has resonated deeply with fans despite never being a single.
Musically, Drive to Golden Hammer is difficult to pin down, something Divorce embraces. “We’re pretty anti-genre,” Tiger says. “There’s folk, alt-country, even some shoegaze elements. Indie is such a weird term—it just means ‘guitar band’ at this point.” More than a label, their defining characteristic is the seamless interplay of two voices. “Felix and I have always written to sing together. The dual vocals are a big part of who we are now—it’s collaboration at its core.”
That sense of identity has been shaped by place as much as sound. With roots in Nottingham, the band acknowledges the challenges of being from an overlooked region. When I mention that, as a Midlander myself, I’ve always felt caught between identities—“In the South, I’m a Northerner. In the North, I’m a Southerner”—Tiger’s reaction is immediate.
“Oh my God, that’s right. That’s absolutely there,” she says. “People forget the Midlands even exists. It has its own culture, its own character, but to so many people, it’s just this vague, in-between place.”
For Tiger, growing up in Nottingham came with a deep urge to escape. “I remember being a teenager, thinking, ‘I’ve got to leave. There’s nothing here.’ I thought I had to move to London to find something bigger, to find people who ‘got it. But then I missed it so much I had to come back. And then you go, and you realise—home is absolutely where you make it.”
Still, the lack of investment in the arts across the Midlands frustrates her. “Felix is from Derby, and we’ve never played a show there. Why? Because there’s no infrastructure for it. Nottingham’s music scene is full of amazing people, but it’s tiny, and it gets no support. It’s ridiculous.”
That DIY spirit, in many ways, shaped Divorce’s writing process. “We started in a bit of a bubble, artistically,” Tiger explains. “We weren’t connected to the industry in the way bands in London might be. So we just followed instinct. I think that actually helped us—it meant we weren’t self-conscious about what we were ‘supposed’ to sound like.”
Even as the band moved into a world-class studio—Real World in Bath—to record their debut, that instinct remained central. “We had this incredible space, all this gear, but we didn’t want to lose the songs in it,” she says. “At the end of the day, we wanted to keep the integrity of the writing. A lot of what made the album was just what felt right in the moment.”
Touring, she admits, is both a dream and a challenge. “It’s exhausting, especially at our level—no tour buses, just a van and a small crew. But at the same time, I’ve always wanted this.” She recalls their first tour, where there was no money, no privacy, and nowhere to sleep but the floor. “And I still loved it,” she says, smiling. “Even now, when it gets tough, I have those moments where I look around and think—yeah, this is exactly what I wanted.”
With Drive to Golden Hammer, Divorce has crafted an album that captures not just a band, but a journey—one that is still very much in motion.
