Not only do Nottingham based quartet Divorce have one of the greatest band names around right now, but their journey towards effervescence via playground-sing-song ‘Grunge’, has already begun.
Less ‘Dude, where’s my car?’, more ‘Darling, are we there yet?’, Divorce on ‘Services’ are cramped, as the guitars fidget over a thumb-twiddling bass-line, we’re introduced to a band who confront for fun.Singer and bassist Tiger Cohen-Towell is fucked off with an acquaintance and their mother. Trigger happy with modal verbs and revealing fantasies of ‘crack[ing] the windscreen with your legs’, she and the rest of Divorce sound akin to a passive aggressive PJ Harvey, extradited to the back seat and fresh out of snacks.
The band (which comprises of members from Do Nothing and Megatrain) know how to navigate the song. With a sense of direction which could get you out of any service station car park, they layer hoovering distortions and ticking percussion, laying the perfect foundations for this lesson in catharsis.
Perhaps the secondary meaning of the track’s title is imperative to it’s message; acts of service are said to be a love language, and just maybe, Divorce are sick of speaking it. As their debut accelerates towards noise itself, “I”s become “AAAGH”s and what was civil is no longer as Cohen-Towell pleads “listen!” when there is seemingly no other choice. It all ends in tears outside Little Chef.
