Review: Divorce, Brudenell Social Club, Leeds, April 4th

Friday, April 4, 2025

Reviewed by Gareth John

Photo by Christopher David

Tonight's stage entrance music choice for Nottingham's four-piece divorce failed to return to John Shuttleworth's II Can't Back Now.

Until recently, divorce was the best secret and one-on-one act. Tonight, the highly anticipated band was grateful to this iconic, and to many artists' favourite venues as vocalists and childhood friends, Tiger Cohen Twell and Felix Mackenzie Burrow.

The band's current tour of sold out promotes the golden hammer to their debut album drive. This is a gravitational record and capitol release that complements the already impressive catalogue of new bands like this. Style-wise, divorce is a difficult band to define. Tonight they moved from my freak fresh and danceable to a fantastic recent single gear with great two-part vocals.

Guitarist Adam Peter Smith and drummer Casper Sandstram make up the quartet, with the chemistry tight, elegant and energetic. But the outstanding superstar is front woman and bassist Cohen Tawell. Her stagecraft moved with confidence as she was forced to stick to every word by the audience, keeping her distance from the microphone during Karen's track.

An excellent jet show is followed by a gentle rolling parachuter. This is a song that reminds me of a moldy peach. The band, taken from the 2023 Heady Metal EP, performed crowd favourites. Eating my words and hurt your metals, two trucks stirred up the divorce early on, and invited comparisons between Wilco and Abba. Tonight, the band covers the Alt-Country, Pop, Indie and Folk genres, and seeing the broad demographics of tonight's crowd, their appeal is very reaching.

Alongside other musical reference points, I recall 10,000 artists such as Maniac, Berry, Maria Mackie and Gramparsons.

At this packed venue, Felix Mackenzie Barrow offered a lovely textured vocal and an easy partnership with the energetic Cohen Towell.

I feel that the parties sometimes encourage dance and shaking, but I was also impressed by the intimacy of tonight's show, the carefully crafted and delicate events. Sometimes, Kate Bush felt like he was making a quiet, slightly presentation of Maverick's song, while others met Bell and Sebastian.

The set gained momentum and paused in the section, followed by the Lord's Thunder chorus followed by an impressive Antarctic with Beach Boys-style complexity. The divorce closed the proceedings with Hangman, a lyrically simple love song with a rich harmony.

The two songs' encore opened on Mercy and ended with checkout, the biggest hit of all time.

Tonight's set is packed with powerful and memorable songs, and the band clearly graduated to one of the most exciting acts of the British music scene. They will certainly continue to increase the rapid rise in popularity at a pace.