FEATURE:
Revisiting…
Let's Eat Grandma – Two Ribbons
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I want to go back to last year…
PHOTO CREDIT: El Hardwick
for this Revisiting… That was a year when so many great albums came out and were being celebrated. One that got some good reviews but is not as played and discussed as much now as it should be is Let’s Eat Grandma’s Two Ribbons. Released four years after the hugely acclaimed I’m All Ears, their third studio album was co-produced by David Wrench. I am going to come to some press and reviews for a superb album that is sort of overlooked. Prior to recording Two Ribbons, Let’s Eat Grandma faced a difficult period. The duo (Rosa Walton and Jenny Hollingworth) had their friendship tested. Rosa Walton moved from their native Norwich to London. She felt exhausted and isolated when she was there. Prior to moving to Norfolk she experienced a nervous breakdown. Most of Two Ribbons was written separately – something that was a new experience for Let’s Eat Grandma. Their friendship did get back on track eventually. Also, a year after I’m All Ears came out, Billy Clayton, a Pop singer and boyfriend of Hollingworth, died from Ewing's sarcoma (a rare form of bone cancer). That caused strained and a period where things were strange and tense. Against the backdrop tragedy and the risk that Let’s Eat Grandma might have gone their own way, Rosa Walton and Jenny Hollingworth created some stunning! An album that definitely connected with critics. Reaching number four in the UK Independent Albums (OCC) chart, many publications included Two Ribbons in their best of 2022 lists (CLASH ranked it seventeenth-best; The Sunday Times put it at number two).
There were some interesting and revealing interview from Let’s Eat Grandma around the release of Two Ribbons. This interview from The i revealed how Two Ribbons followed a period of dislocation and turbulence for the duo:
“A lot changed in quite a short period of time,” Hollingworth says carefully today, speaking over Zoom from her bedroom. “There was a lot of turmoil.” Their new album, Two Ribbons, explores it all. A fearless record full of club-ready euphoria and intricate soundscapes, it strips things back one minute (the sparse, 80s-inspired “Sunday”), dials them up to the extreme the next (“Watching You Go”, a scuzzy rock anthem complete with a twinkling stadium-sized outro).
Across Two Ribbons, Let’s Eat Grandma tackle friendship, self-discovery and defiant hope (“I still believe that I haven’t met the best days of my life” they sing on the buoyant dance of “Levitating”) while leaving plenty of room for the grief and loss to breathe.
“We both held on so tight that we’re bruising up,” they sing on the gut-wrenching title track. “Just think if we’d been together, we’d be breaking up now,” sings Hollingworth on “Happy New Year”, before they laugh at the idea of fighting for custody of a synth. When I ask whether the band ever considered breaking up, Walton says, “It didn’t even cross my mind.”
“Vibrant, colourful, emotional” is how they describe the record. “Sparkly, but also intense and vulnerable.” Yes, Hollingworth calls it “the perfect soundtrack to every kind of sobbing”, but she does so with a grin. Two Ribbons is an upbeat pop album with plenty of moments of joy. “We’re just fans of pop music,” says Walton. “Being able to put across complex, deep subjects in something as immediate and accessible as pop music can be really powerful,” adds Hollingworth. “Not that Rosa and I write music that’s easy listening.”
It took nearly two years to write the album. “It was a deliberately laid-back process,” says Walton. “I don’t think either of us particularly like pressure. It does feel like we know what we’re doing now though, in terms of songwriting, production and lyrics.” Hollingworth laughs. “That’s so weird,” she says. “I don’t feel like I’m ever confident writing a song. It always feels like I’m out of my depth.”
Still, creating Two Ribbons helped both of them to process what they had been through. “Making this album was like, ‘Life is not very good at the moment – let’s make some music about it and work out what’s going on with our relationship and in our lives.’”
“We were making it for ourselves,” adds Walton. “It took that pressure off because what was going on in our personal lives was bigger than the record.”
Hollingworth agrees. “We weren’t trying to prove anything – we were just making a record to express ourselves and have something to keep us going. It’s really hard to think of another project that I feel like I’ve put more into. It’s difficult to explain, but it’s just very special for me.”
“Definitely,” adds Walton. “The best songs are born out of having something that you really, really need to get out but can’t fully put into words in a conversation. It became almost like a necessity to write these tracks.”
It makes sense, then, that they are not paying too much heed to how the album is received. “It’s not because I think we’re so brilliant, or that we don’t have anything left to prove,” says Hollingworth. “This record is so personal, so emotional and made up of songs about grief and our relationship falling apart, that what other people think of it didn’t really feel like the main concern. I do want it to resonate, though”.
THE FADER also spoke with Let’s Eat Grandma. It is amazing how they managed to record such a cohesive and wonderful album at a very difficult time! There was a lot of transition, challenge and rebuilding that occurred when they were making their third studio album. One hopes that a fourth album will come soon enough – and it will be a much smoother and happier time:
“All of this; love, loss, new beginnings, bittersweet realizations, and the enduring power of platonic intimacy, is felt in Two Ribbons, the pair’s third album. They wrote separately for the first time, presenting songs that expressed their feelings like news reports from the other side. For Walton this was chiefly how the move to London was not all she had dreamed about, instead discovering the city to be an isolating and lonely place. She had recently split from a long-term boyfriend and was exploring her bisexuality. This rush of feelings is felt in the glittering synth-pop jam “Hall Of Mirrors” (“There wasn’t a girl that had made me shy until you… somebody tell me how I’m going to work this out?”), one of the many Two Ribbons songs that marry confused emotional states with piercingly sharp pop smarts. The death of Clayton also runs through “Watching You Go,” a tender vow to make the most of life that barely masks Hollingworth’s rage at losing someone so young.
Two Ribbons is an album that acknowledges friendship as a union between two individuals, not necessarily an entity in itself. Naturally, the return to that early closeness is where the album explodes with a kind of euphoria that lingers longest in the memory. At one point in “Happy New Year,” Walton sings “I’ve been thinking quite a lot about how I want the old us back” before adding “It's okay. Say what you wanna say / Now we've grown in different ways.” Speaking to The FADER earlier this week, Let’s Eat Grandma talked about those respective changes, as well as how they got their telepathic friendship back on track and what they learned along the way.
THE FADER: There’s a real sense of overwhelming emotion on Two Ribbons. Nothing is understated at any point. Was that rush something you felt was essential to the sound of the album?
Rosa Walton: I think that’s quite a signature part of our sound, mainly because we’re both very emotional people. We’ve always tried to put the vast scope of different emotions that you can feel into our music.
Jenny Hollingworth: Given the subject matter of the record, it being about grief and loss with different relationship changes, makes you feel closer to life in a lot of ways. The record deals with that a lot. There’s a real vitality that comes from thinking about death, they’re tied together for me. Realizing that life is fragile makes it more beautiful and exciting.
One message to take away from this album is that change isn’t something to be feared, but rather to be embraced…
RW: That is something I have always struggled with, especially in relationships. The idea that it’s not going to be the same as it was. That’s the saddest thing to me. We’ve both talked about different stuff on this record but we’re both at a point where that sort of thing comes up. Writing about it is one of the only ways I can process it and do something with those feelings.
JH: It’s a mix of changes where it’s been really difficult to go through but there’s things to take from it and then other changes where you’re still looking for the answers.
It’s not a record that offers any easy answers, is it? It makes it feel more human, I think. Have you been able to find any of the answers you were looking for since you finished making the album?
RW: There’s definitely been some acceptance on my part of things I have written about. I feel less in that really tense emotion now and have been able to detach myself from those feelings somewhat.
JH: Acceptance is a key word there. I’m never going to have the answers to something like losing someone so young, it’s never going to make sense to me. Acceptance doesn’t mean that it doesn’t upset me or make me angry but it’s acknowledging that it’s an ongoing thing. That is what a lot of the album is about; it’s about one of us looking for an answer and the other telling them that there isn’t one”.
I am going to end with some reviews. As I say, Two Ribbons received big acclaim. I am surprised it is not really played that much. Let’s Eat Grandma are one of the U.K.’s best artists. Always releasing such interesting music. This is what NME wrote when they spent time with one of 2022’s most overlooked and brilliant albums:
“Three years ago, Let’s Eat Grandma were hit with unimaginable tragedy. The Norwich-based experimental pop duo – comprised of childhood pals Rosa Walton and Jenny Hollingworth – lost the latter’s boyfriend, the 22-year-old rising musician Billy Clayton, to a rare form of bone cancer.
It was, of course, understandable that they scrapped their forthcoming 2019 US tour. There had also been fractures in Walton and Hollingworth’s friendship, borne of miscommunication and a degradation in their “telepathic” bond of times past. In the years since the release of their Ivor Norvello-nominated second album ‘I’m All Ears’ (2018) and Clayton’s death, Walton moved to London, which gave the pair space to find the language and melodies with which to express themselves. The result is ‘Two Ribbons’, a mirror in part to the letters they wrote to one another as they tried to navigate new feelings about love, loss and friendship.
What’s sonically striking about ‘Two Ribbons’ is its accessibility compared to the peculiar, juvenile explorations of 2016 debut ‘I, Gemini’ and its potent, PC Music-influenced follow-up. Its first half largely consists of glowing synth-pop (‘Happy New Year’, ‘Hall Of Mirrors’), its second tripped-out acoustic and moving balladry (‘Sunday’, ‘Two Ribbons’). Time spent apart has certainly pulled their pop sentiments into sharper focus.
On quivering synth-pop banger ‘Levitation’, Walton details finding glimmers of hope amid a destructive, hedonistic episode. “I’m good at picking up the pieces from the bathroom floor,” she sings over precision-tooled drum machine claps, before seeing “a piece of something glittering inside the drain.” Coupled with the song’s effervescent tone, it makes for a listen full of heart and hope – and the desire to dance till you drop.
‘Strange Conversations’, a dreamy guitar-driven number that’s just one example of Let’s Eat Grandma’s improved, more mature singing, touches on seeking religious comfort amid grieving. “But even faith won’t soothe this ache tonight” highlights that there isn’t always a solution. A lack of resolution is also reflected in the lilting, glockenspiel-speckled ‘Two Ribbons’, which rhythmically teases a climax that never arrives. “I wanna find the answer, I just want to be your best friend,” they sing, before accepting that “like two ribbons” they’re “still woven, although we are fraying”.
The glorious quirks and inventiveness of Let’s Eat Grandma’s earlier work might be amiss on ‘Two Ribbons’, but its immediacy will likely win them new fans. This is the stirring sound of reinvigoration in the face of loss”.
I shall round off with The Line of Best Fit and what they said about the superb Two Ribbons. This is an album that I can recommend to everyone. You will definitely fall under the spell of Let’s Eat Grandma. I hope that, if they do released another album, it gets wider and more sustained airplay and attention. Two Ribbons was more than worthy of that:
“While in lockdown in Norwich, Jenny Hollingworth and Rosa Walton – who together form the duo Let’s Eat Grandma – would take walks together to a nearby cemetery.
Graveyards were something Hollingworth had come to find a strange comfort in after the death of her boyfriend, electronic musician Billy Clayton, in March 2019. Walking with Walton was a chance to escape the stuffy melancholy of quarantine – to exist, and grieve, in the presence of nature.
Those moments are captured on “In the Cemetery,” a short interlude found on the latter half of the duo’s third full length album, Two Ribbons. The track – gentle and wordless, scattered with birdsong and insect chirping – is a reiteration of the running theme of Two Ribbons, charting a friendship that has been permanently changed through moments of loss and maturation.
It also sounds separate from the electro-pop psychedelic world that the two created in their 2016 debut I, Gemini, and its critically acclaimed follow up, I’m All Ears, in 2018. And while the glitz and oddities of their previous work still come through in Two Ribbons, the music still feels subdued in a way, as if covered by a sheer layer of organza. Here, you’re asked to listen more closely, to catch the unsaid words that float through an instrumental solo or a lyrical chant and hold them through the next verse.
The divide between Hollingworth and Walton has never been clearer in Two Ribbons, nor the subject matter more intimate. Hollingworth and Walton wrote separately on the album for the first time, and the resulting maturity in their musical style is both natural (the album comes four years after their last) and necessary. Both have talked at length about how their childhood sisterly bond began to fray at the edges while touring for I’m All Ears, a dissolution based not in fights or fundamental disagreements, but words that weren’t landing and thoughts that stayed hidden.
In that sense, Two Ribbons sounds like a conversation, the sonic space of the record built like an open-air confession booth. Hollingworth and Walton both have grievances, yes, but they also have the patience to listen and build upon them accordingly. Hollingworth adds a smooth, euphoric saxophone solo to Walton’s dream-pop anthem to bisexual discovery in “Hall of Mirrors.” Likewise, in the Hollingworth-penned “Watching You Go,” about her relationship with Clayton, Walton plays a wailing guitar lick to lift the kaleidoscopic dance track to devastating heights.
This interplay – already quintessential to a Let’s Eat Grandma record – elevates the album and makes clear the friendship between the two has only grown stronger. Two Ribbons illustrates that love isn’t fixed through grand gestures. It’s slowly pieced back together through mutual care and trust”.
If you are unfamiliar with Let’s Eat Grandma, I think that Two Ribbons is as good as any place to start. Go back and listen to their debut, I, Gemini, and its 2018 follow-up, I’m All Ears. Rosa Walton and Jenny Hollingworth are tremendous artists. I love what they have put out. Erven though they had their close bond tested prior to recording their third studio album, what they released into the world was a work of…
PURE brilliance.