I'm All Ears

I'm All Ears is an even greater revelation than Rosa Walton and Jenny Hollingworth's globally acclaimed debut, I, Gemini. The second act from the British songwriters, is the most startling record you'll hear this year. It's alive with furious pop, napologetic grandeur, intimate ballads; with loops, Logic, outrageous 80s drum solos, as well as production from David Wrench (The xx/Frank Ocean/Caribou), SOPHIE (famed for her own material and work with Madonna, Charli XCX and Vince Staples) and Faris Badwan (The Horrors). It's an album that cements Let's Eat Grandma as one of the most creative bands in the world right now. Rosa and Jenny were just 17 when Let's Eat Grandma released their debut. Childhood friends who grew up writing songs that, over time, emerged into something magical. Call it experimental sludge pop, bubblegum-psych rock, it was a marriage of magnificence and makeshift, with synths, saxophones, clapping games and recorders, which secured them sold out shows, critical acclaim and a spellbinding turn on Jools Holland. Their audience was drawn to the strange beauty of their music, to something otherworldly. The album played on the idea of the pair's inseparability - its title, I, Gemini, a nod to their twin-likeness, its songs revealing two strikingly similar young voices wrapped around one another, live shows and promotional photos frequently showing the pair in complementary outfits, their long hair intertwined. This time it's different. I'm All Ears is the work of two confident young women, very much each their own person, with their own tastes and interests. Their lyrics, too, have matured. For this record they were keen to move beyond what the band regard as the lyrical 'crypticness' of their debut, towards something more transparent, and at times vulnerable. "I think it's a much more honest record. It's very open," says Jenny. "It is a lot about youth and young people and the experiences we have." Throughout these songs there is recurrent imagery of trains and automobiles, of movement, shifting seasons, the sense of lives expanding. After all, this is a record written by two young women whose lives have changed unimaginably in the past two years, who have come to find the world lying open before them.