Felix Mackenzie-Barrow has spent much of the last few years on the go. As a member of Divorce, that has meant long stretches on the road and very little time to stand still. Right now, he is in the US again, which he describes as “a very strange and overwhelming place”, even if the work itself remains fun. It is from inside that constant coming and going that Book Of Churches began to take shape, not as a dramatic break from band life, but as something quieter that had always been ticking away alongside it.
“It’s always been a part of my process,” Felix says. He had been writing solo material for years before Divorce existed, but as the band grew, he noticed his songwriting naturally splitting into two different voices. “One for the band and one just for me.” Instead of creating tension, that divide became oddly productive. Writing for Divorce felt less pressured, while Book Of Churches stayed private, untouched by expectation. “No one was expecting it of me, which was freeing in some ways.”
That sense of privacy runs through the entire process of making his self-titled new record. Much of it was written alone, squeezed into gaps between tours. Felix never thought of himself as someone particularly good at solitude, having always gravitated towards collaboration, but band life has a way of changing your relationship with being alone. “Being in Divorce has been so overwhelmingly social at times, I’ve found solitude increasingly precious.” Making the album became “often an exercise in sitting with myself” and a way of managing the jolt between life on and off the road, “going from never being alone to being very much alone, whilst always in a state of coming or going”.
For all its intimacy, Book Of Churches was never meant to stay hidden forever. Felix always imagined sharing it, once it felt ready. “Sharing feels like a way of letting go,” he says, explaining that the privacy of the process was really about making sure he believed in what he was making before anyone else got to hear it.
The way the record came together was, by Felix’s own admission, “incredibly DIY” and “kind of naive”, though there is nothing sloppy about the intention behind it. “I knew that I didn’t have any money to make the record with, so that was a constraint,” he explains. Working alone meant relying on whatever recording knowledge he had picked up along the way. “I had two decent mics and a laptop with GarageBand, and I figured I could make a sound I was happy with.” Rather than dressing that up, he leaned into it. “I worked within my means and within the bedrooms I was living in through the process, so I knew it would always want to sound scrappy, and I didn’t want to hide that.”
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