LET’S EAT GRANDMA SERVE UP INTROSPECTION AND POP DISTURBANCE
THERE’S LOADS of magic head shop vibes going on here,” says Rosa Walton, of the city she and best friend/ Let’s Eat Grandma collaborator Jenny Hollingworth grew up in. Norwich, it turns out, is not solely the preserve of Alan Partridge and Bill Oddie (although, says Walton, whose dad is an ornithologist, Oddie is “always hanging around”). As well as boutiques selling drug paraphernalia and pagan/tarot card booths, there are people getting up to “weird shit”. These hidden, psychedelic portals of Norwich are the result of the city being somewhat isolated and overlooked, says Hollingworth. “Because there’s not so much going on as in bigger cities,” she says, “it gave us the space to do our own thing.” Accordingly, the multi-instrumentalist duo’s debut album, 2016’s I, Gemini, crackled with creative freedom, taking in grunge, spindly folk and schoolyard rap. A mere two years later, Let’s Eat Grandma released their second album for Transgressive, I’m All Ears – a thrilling, massive pop record which moves from gleaming R&B to ecstatic, melancholy disco and delicate piano songs. A Top 20 placing in MOJO’s Albums of 2018, it’s inspired, say the pair, by ’80s mainstream chart hits, Massive Attack’s Protection and the synth bubblegum of PC Music. The disc features the production talents of electro maverick Sophie and Horrors polymath Faris Badwan, but for all its size and sheen, it is still deliciously playful, sharp and boldly intimate. “I don’t think there can be any shyness,” says Walton, of the band’s writing process. “We usually come up with the beginnings of ideas together, but there’s no pattern, that’s why our songs turn out so different.” The pair have been writing music for six years, but became friends aged four, when they bonded over Hollingworth’s painting of a sea snail. They made art from that moment – from writing stories to shooting spy films (“usually about kidnap”). Let’s Eat Grandma happened almost by accident. “Because we’re such curious people, we try loads of ideas,” says Hollingworth. “It wasn’t like, ‘We’re going to be in a band and do stuff together for evermore,’ it just escalated.” Early gigs took place at open mikes in local pubs, and the band acquired its name at Hollingworth’s 14th birthday party in 2013, via a discussion about punctuation jokes; her apostrophesensitive suggestion of Lobsters Crackers was rejected because of a local band already called Lobster, so the pair became Let’s Eat Grandma on a pal’s proposal. “People think we’ve written it to be pretentious and arty,” says Hollingworth, “which is the funniest shit ever, because we named [the band] when we were literally a group of kids at a party being silly.” “It still sums us up,” says Walton, “I don’t think we take ourselves too seriously. No regrets.”
I’m All Ears is out now on Transgressive Records. Let’s Eat Grandma tour the UK in February 2019.
“I don’t think there can be any shyness.” ROSA WALTON