MARY IN THE JUNKYARD, ROLE MODEL HERMIT

Mary in the Junkyard are a London-based trio made up of Clari Freeman-Taylor, Saya Barbaglia, and David Addison, three longtime friends whose connection goes back to their early teens. Their debut album, Role Model Hermit, arrives after a run of early shows around South London and a growing buzz that has quickly marked them as one of the most intriguing new bands coming out of the U.K.

At the center of it all is Freeman-Taylor. Raised in the countryside north of London, she spent much of her childhood wandering through woods, talking to herself, and finding meaning in the natural world around her. That sense of imagination runs throughout the album, with songs filled with strange imagery, old stories, and moments that blur the line between reality and something more surreal.

There’s a quiet, almost fragile beauty to much of Role Model Hermit, with Freeman-Taylor’s soft vocals and intricate guitar work sitting alongside Barbaglia’s shape-shifting strings and Addison’s steady, grounding rhythms. But just as often, that calm gives way to something heavier, more distorted, and more intense. It’s that push and pull, the “Mary” and the “Junkyard,” as the band themselves describe it, that defines the album’s sound.

Lyrically, the songs move through ideas of connection, isolation, and the strange ways people find each other. Whether it’s the chaos of city life, the search for meaning, or the quiet rituals that hold relationships together, there’s a constant tension between wanting to be seen and wanting to disappear.

Listening to Role Model Hermit, with its surreal imagery and shifting moods, is a wonderful trip. It’s unpredictable, occasionally disorienting, but always compelling. I found myself completely absorbed by it over multiple listens.