Nottingham’s Divorce have been one of the most exciting indie rock outfits for a good two years now. New song “Scratch Your Metal” – hot off the band’s performance at End Of The Road Festival – is once again a slam dunk of a song, displaying inventive songwriting with their unique balance of humour and dramatics.
“Scratch Your Metal” is probably as close to The Cure-level lovelorn melancholy as Divorce has come, adorned with chorus guitars and chilled vocal harmonies. But Divorce once again put a fresh spin on familiar emotions in their music. “Scratch Your Metal” is a song that mirrors the devotion towards a lover with the despair of losing them: “For I’ve been proud and I’ve been righteous/ I’ve been sick/I’ve been dishonest/And I have the skin to match it /Oh the thinking that I’ve found it/ When you’re sleeping next to me/You’re as fearful as you’ve ever been/And fearful that it’s never been.”
“I think this is probably the closest thing to a love song that’s been written for Divorce,” vocalist/bassist Tiger Cohen-Towell explains. “‘Scratch Your Metal’ means showing the most difficult and sometimes unbearable parts of yourself outwardly, because the sound of something scratching against metal is the most unpleasant noise I can think of. To be earnest, the song is about the duality of relationships, and accepting a partner as flawed and human in the same ways as yourself. It was written on a cheap Casio keyboard at a friend’s I was staying at in London, and it’s Divorce’s own little stab at synth pop banger”.
The video echoes these sentiments, showing Cohen-Towell and co-songwriter Felix Mackenzie-Barrow dancing in an empty ballroom, swaying with disarming abandon as the scenery flashes forward between their older and younger self. The dancing is choreographed yet still unfettered, which homes in on the arresting theme of the song, which talks about love persisting through one’s imperfections and flaws.
Discussing the accompanying visuals, drummer Kasper Sandstrøm has the following to say: “For this video, we worked with our good pals Clump Collective to create something really free flowing. The theme of the song is based on identity in all its forms, so we decided that instead of coming up with a choreographed dance that we needed to practice beforehand, we’d move in ways that felt natural to each of us, no matter how it looked! It turns out we’re all secretly professional dancers, which made the process extremely easy and not at all time consuming.“
“Scratch Your Metal” is the latest glimpse of Divorce’s upcoming second EP Heady Metal (out Novemver 17th via Gravity/EMI). Stream the single here and/or watch the video below. Revisit our interview with Divorce from last year here.
