The members of Mary In The Junkyard are stars in a subtly magical way, where the energy shifts in any space they enter. When we meet in a gleaming north London photo studio on a mid-October afternoon, the room instantly feels more atmospheric and characterful when they walk in. Stood beneath a projector, the trio spend two relaxed hours posing for the camera as a series of film noir-esque filters wash over them.
Low lighting, a guitar-heavy playlist and widescreen images of skeletal trees and starry nights set the mood for the afternoon, but it’s the band’s uniform look that comes to define their NME Cover shoot. Clari Freeman-Taylor (vocalist and guitarist) is keen to show off the handmade knitwear she made for the occasion, from bonnets and baggy jumpers to a jester-style hat adorned with silver cat collar bells. “The fact we’re all wearing the same thing means we’re almost too cohesive,” says bassist and viola player Saya Barbaglia as we move outside to huddle around a café table.
It’s this sublime, cosmic shared vision that has defined Mary In The Junkyard’s rise to date. The band make music defined by winding chord progressions and abstract textures, songs that feel simultaneously hypnotic and confrontational. Freeman-Taylor’s airy register has the whimsy of Jens Lekman and the crisp, lucid delivery of The xx’s Romy – the type of voice that curls and stretches words for added emotion.
The latter is a quality central to their sound and Freeman-Taylor’s role as lead songwriter. During our interview, she is soft-spoken but also dazzlingly charismatic, twirling the gumdrop blue-dyed tips of her hair and giggling at the strange detours her thoughts can take. Ask her about the significance of teeth, a recurring image in the band’s music videos as well as their attire (drummer David Addison’s necklace; a forearm tattoo on Freeman-Taylor) and she’ll tell you they represent “true wisdom and the smallest, most solid piece of a person,” before breaking into a dog impression mere seconds later.
Smelting embers of weeping emo, minimalist classical (Freeman-Taylor and Barbaglia met at a youth orchestra programme), folk and acoustic guitar pop, the band are something rare in today’s rock landscape. Despite emerging from south London’s fertile Windmill scene, their songs are so intricate that it’s clear they are influenced by more than just the usual gaggle of angular post-punk groups. In May, the band released their debut EP ‘This Old House’, a feast of ideas as rich and intoxicating as alt-J’s seminal ‘An Awesome Wave’ album – music full of sirens, fantasy and ghostly visions.
Across the EP, Freeman-Taylor’s lyrics are nakedly personal, their presence always felt even when her voice is no louder than her bandmates’ arrangements. She grew up in the Hertfordshire commuter town of Hitchin, awed by the gravitational pull of nearby London. “Widen my horizons, please / There’s so much I don’t know about this land,” she sings of her move to the capital on ‘Tuesday’. Its accompanying video features a yeti facing an untimely death: a peek into the band’s doomy, dramatic visual world.
“Have you read [Maurice Sendak’s picture book] Where The Wild Things Are?” Freeman-Taylor asks NME. “I find a lot of comfort from the idea of monsters. I love it because it speaks to a part of me that I don’t often feel that I see in art. There’s a sweetness that you can find in stuff that’s a bit creepy, a unique perspective from things that are deemed as ‘horrible’ or ‘ugly’.”
“I find a lot of comfort from the idea of monsters” – Clari Freeman-Taylor
Addison takes over: “We were surprised, or least interested, by how a lot of the early coverage around us portrayed the visual element of our music as ‘scary’. It’s meant to be playful, not disturbing.” The band don’t seek to escape nightmares or demons in their work, but explore a more peaceful coexistence with them.
As a child, Freeman-Taylor relished in letting her imagination run riot by “making up my own wild characters to entertain myself.” It’s a freedom that has spilled over into adulthood: in the past year, the band have established themselves on the live circuit via playing some of the capital’s more unconventional venues, from the electronica-focused Corsica Studios to the Institute of Contemporary Arts. Next February, they’re set to play at storied nightclub Fabric – a venue not typically associated with guitar bands, let alone those as fresh-faced and quietly experimental as Mary In The Junkyard.
At each headline show, they have displayed handmade papier-mâché “creatures” around the stage, each one representing a different mood or feeling. Freeman-Taylor begins to roll out a list, explaining what each one means. “The yeti: wildness and chaos. The moth: hope and light. The big black dog: fear… as if something is about to eat you.” That playful smile briefly cuts through the cool autumn air once more.
The richness and ambiguity of ‘This Old House’ – which the band worked on with XL Recordings head honcho Richard Russell – allows listeners to make their own connections with the music. New single ‘This Is My California’, meanwhile, breaks down the walls around their typically wiry, anxious riffs, opening space for levity. The track captures a “transition period,” says Barbaglia, who recently dropped out of university to work as the band’s tour manager.
Where they had spent years trialling out material from ‘This Old House’ at gigs before officially releasing anything, ‘This Is My California’ had only previously been aired three times in a live setting. “We were writing parts of the song while recording in the studio, which was new for us,” Barbaglia says. “It’s very different to the music we have made before as it has more of a consistent groove.”
“We were surprised early coverage around us portrayed our visual element as ‘scary’” – David Addison
Freeman-Taylor notes that a summer of festival dates afforded the band the time to gain a deeper understanding of what it takes to nurture the “very different type of friendship” they share. “I feel like we really have each other’s backs,” she says. “We have learned what it’s like to spend stressful days together, and be completely silent when we need to.”
Their exhilarating gigs have held their peers in thrall. In recent months, they’ve befriended the likes of Fat Dog, King Hannah and Dutch indie-rockers Personal Trainer, the latter of whom they confided in about adjusting to life on the road. The bounties of their ascendant career have occasionally been a double-edged sword, explains Addison, who is currently halfway through his final year of studies. “We always have to be ready to do things at short notice. At the moment, we don’t really make any money out of touring because the cost of doing it is more than the fee,” he says.
Despite having to navigate these emotional and financial hardships, the band affirm that they still feel energised by all the new possibilities that lay within their grasp. The future lies open. Freeman-Taylor and Barbaglia say that they built a staunch sense of self-belief via facing daily rejection as teenage buskers. The former also previously navigated online hate and viral “hysteria” when she was part of Second Thoughts alongside Addison, an indie group that came to prominence in lockdown via Discord meme channels. “Starting Mary [In The Junkyard] felt like a breather,” Freeman-Taylor told NME in August 2023.
We don’t broach the subject of their past musical lives this afternoon. The band have moved on and then some: just weeks ago, they secured their first studio in Lewisham, which they believe to have been a former special education building. “Weirdly, it has a feeling of nesting. We’ve been soundproofing walls and we’re even going to have three coat hangers laid out in a row, Goldilocks and the Three Bears-style,” says Addison. “Magical things will start to come out of a space we can call our own.”
Barbagila, meanwhile, recalls commuting via Lime bike and coming across “a portal to heaven” (read: an overflowing skip) and taking a bunch of used carpets – before quickly throwing them out due to their stench. “It’s been silly and fun working all of this out together while on a budget,” she says, with a faint note of laughter in her voice.
Seemingly more at ease with where the conversation is heading, Freeman-Taylor lights a rollie. She describes how she has already brought some paintings and a knitting machine to the “Mary In The Junkyard factory”. They’ve also each kept friendship bracelets from fans, plus setlists, festival wristbands, and dozens of Polaroid pictures to decorate the studio with.
The band’s mission to document these achievements makes sense in the context of a journey spent embracing their outsider charm. Adjusting to spending nearly every day together has done them the world of good, too; they’ve started work on their next project and have formally discussed long-term ambitions. Addison wants to tour the US and Southeast Asia, while Barbagila wants to reignite her teenage hobby of making instruments.
“You know what, most of all, I’d love to compose a big, orchestral soundtrack for a folk horror film. We would do that really well at that,” says Freeman-Taylor. Her face radiates pure elation, as though she knows she might be onto something.
Mary In The Junkyard’s ‘This Is My California’ is out now via AMF Records
Listen to Mary In The Junkyard’s exclusive playlist to accompany The Cover below on Spotify or here on Apple Music
Words: Sophie Williams
Photography: Fiona Garden
Location: Tileyard TYX
Label: AMF Records