Of all the bands named for punctuation jokes, Let’s Eat Grandma are probably the best. Childhood friends Jenny Hollingworth and Rosa Walton were barely out of primary school when they first started playing together, booking gigs around Norwich at an age where most other kids were still figuring out what to do in that awkward phase between playing with dolls and getting legless off cheap cider in parks.
In 2016, they used the songs they started writing together as a playtime activity to form the basis of their genre-bending debut ‘I, Gemini’. The record was kind of sweet and kind of eerie, made all the more so by Rosa and Jenny’s playground clapping games and childlike voices. Not unreasonably, comparisons to the twins from the Shining surfaced over and over again. That was the way they liked things, too – in promotional shots they were matchy-matchy, hiding behind entwined curtains of long brown hair.
Let’s Eat Grandma’s momentum accelerated as they hit the usual high points – Glastonbury, Jools Holland – until the cycle for ‘I Gemini’ wound down and things went quiet. The faux twins disappeared from view. Then, in January of this year, came ‘Hot Pink’, and the pair blew their own game wide open. They ditched their old personas, and happily stepped back out into the public view as individuals. Adults.
On ‘I’m All Ears’, the bubblegum psychedelia of ‘I, Gemini’ has been replaced with glimmering, sharp-edged pop. The result is a sprawling pop epic that weaves musings on youth, friendship, and change with light-hearted instrumental interludes.
That’s true in both a literal and lyrical sense, it seems. The new album spends a lot of time talking about movement and change, seasons shifting and things coming to an end. In the gap between ‘I, Gemini’ and today, the pair have lived out the last of their teenage years, with all the twists and turns that time involves.
“I think the couple of years that we wrote the record over was a big time of change for us. Especially being the age that we are.” Rosa agrees.
In a more literal sense, the record is influenced in no small part by the fact that they are almost constantly on the road.
“It’s a running theme in our lives. We always say that we feel most at home when we’re on the train or in a Travelodge,” Rosa laughs.
The recording process tends to be a rolling circus, too. Some of the sessions for ‘I’m All Ears’ involved a trip to SOPHIE’s house in LA, to record ‘Hot Pink’ and ‘It’s Not Just Me’. The change of location bled into the tracks, Jenny and Rosa think, bending the music to its will.
“I think [‘Hot Pink’] definitely sounds like LA in comparison to the rest of the album. It’s got a much sunnier, brighter feel about it,” Rosa muses.
Jenny nods. “Yeah, I think you do get influenced by your surroundings when you’re writing.”
“She’s really cool. Like, I know that seems funny to say but often when you meet people they just seem so much like you, but SOPHIE’s on another plane,” Jenny says.
“Everything has a point,” says Jenny.
By this same token their other producer on ‘Hot Pink’ and ‘It’s Not Just Me’, The Horrors’ Faris Badwan, is a London person.
“He’s too much of a goth,” Rosa grins. “I think he’d burn in the LA sun.”
Not very goth, then. Still, our theory crumbles a bit when it comes to Let’s Eat Grandma themselves. If everyone is of a particular setting, then what about Jenny and Rosa who are, at this point at least, a little bit of everywhere? Norwich has a particularly tight music scene, but with all their coming and going, it can be difficult to feel totally at home.
She pulls aside her jacket to reveal a badge that says ‘SKYNT’, pinned to her waistband.
Well. That’s us rumbled. Rosa and Jenny laugh, but it isn’t as if there’s any friction here. They’ve just clocked what the game is, and aren’t particularly interested in playing it.
While they developed a reputation for being somewhat mysterious on their last record, these days there is a new openness to Let’s Eat Grandma’s lyrics. Now they’ve had more time to grow into their beliefs, Jenny and Rosa felt confident in making ‘I’m All Ears’ much less cryptic than its predecessor, and using their tracks as a vehicle for the things that affect themselves and their friends. Besides, they aren’t overly concerned about how other people interpret their writing, anyway.
“Maybe now we’re more confident in our feelings and our beliefs about stuff than we were when we wrote the first record, so we’re more purposeful with saying stuff,” says Rosa.
“Somebody asked in another interview if it was a statement, and I think that’s assuming that we write songs with the intention of . Obviously, we release it, but we don’t sit there and be like, ‘We want everyone to know this’,” Jenny says.
She considers for a moment. “I guess it might be a statement, but not intentionally.”
It’s true that they have plenty to talk about on this record. When they dropped ‘Hot Pink’ back in January, Rosa and Jenny dove straight in with a subject they feel strongly about. ‘Hot Pink’ deals with misogyny, in the way that we as a society treat femininity as being inherently weaker or less valuable than masculinity.
“Femininity is looked down on in comparison to masculinity, and it shouldn’t be like that,” Rosa says thoughtfully. “It shouldn’t be inferior; it’s such a powerful thing. I think people feel like they can’t express that side of themselves, whether it’s girls or guys or whoever. The song was just about celebrating femininity and the power in it. It’s something that we think about a lot, and a lot of our friends think about a lot and feel and struggle with, so it’s something that we felt we needed to write about.”
Power dynamics come into play a lot on this record, in more ways than one. ‘Snakes and Ladders’, for example, delves into dependence and pressure. But while on the surface the track could be about a particularly toxic dynamic between people, that wasn’t the intention at all.
Jenny nods. “Also the deceit element, of snakes.”
“It’s a lot about having to buy into consumerism and brainwashing,” says Rosa.
“Also the suffering involved, and the problems people have in the world as a result of it,” Jenny adds.
“And the effect on the environment as well,” says Rosa.
It’s clearly something they feel passionately about. They lean into the table, trading off sentences in one continuous shared thought.
“I have to stop myself sometimes because it gets me so down and angry,” says Jenny.
“It gets to the point where there’s only so much you can do about it,” Rosa agrees.
“That’s what the song’s about. Having to contribute to something that goes against your morals. It’s a mindfuck,” says Rosa.
“Yeah!” they say in unison.
“I think a lot of the songs are at least partially about it,” Jenny says.
“It’s quite a trend in our lives,” Rosa smiles.
“It’s something that affects us and people who we’re close to a lot,” says Jenny.
“And so many other people,” Rosa adds.
‘Ava’ is a touching tune, lilting and softer than the rest of the album. Despite being the stylistic outlier on the record, though, it is also one of the clearest examples of what the album is truly about. At its heart, ‘I’m All Ears’ is an extended riff on friendship.
“A lot of the tracks, most of them are about platonic relationships. Or even the platonic relationship that you have with someone you’re going out with. Things should be based on friendship anyway,” Jenny says.
“I felt that because we were travelling and doing things with the band that I didn’t have enough time to spend with my friends, and I felt like they were all doing things together that I couldn’t be a part of,” she says.
She pauses for a moment. “It’s hard when you miss people.”
“It’s hard when our lives are so separate to all of our friends’ lives, and that makes it isolating in a way,” Rosa agrees.
“That’s why I like going back to Norwich, hanging out with people and going to their gigs; it makes me feel more normal,” says Jenny.
With ‘I’m All Ears’, Let’s Eat Grandma are getting their balance in a new, adult world. Maybe true ‘normality’ – whatever that might be – is fleeting at the moment, but Rosa and Jenny are establishing their own baseline. Besides, it doesn’t seem like they’d have it any other way.
“I’m just enjoying being at home most of the time at the moment, so that’s why I’m like this, but if I was there all the time I’d be like, ‘I am going fucking mental, somebody let me leave now!'” Jenny laughs.
If they mean to go on like this, then all the better for us.
Let’s Eat Grandma’s album ‘I’m All Ears’ is out 29th June.
