Mary in the Junkyard’s debut album, Role Model Hermit, is a unique beast. Its beautiful blend of folky textures, weathered ghost stories and wiry alternative rock builds confidently on the band’s early buzz while confirming them as one of the most distinctive voices to emerge from the contemporary UK alternative music landscape.
From the opening moments of “Mantra III”, the album establishes its own world. Creeping entrances, loose percussion, folk textures, and soft vocals immediately create something that feels weathered and distinctly of these isles. Throughout the record, spacious production, the harmonium and violin give the music, at points, a cinematic widescreen quality, but it never loses the immediate intimacy of a three-piece band.
The songs feel rooted in a dramatic landscape, unfurling slowly to reveal twisted tales that subtly hint at the more personal.
The album is most interesting when it frees itself from conventional rock structures, particularly in the latter half. Shifting rhythms, ambient noise and creeping textures embed themselves across the collection of songs and reshape it into something more intriguing. There are moments that hint at jazz, folk and even dub, but none of these ever dominate; it’s all in service of the storytelling. They become part of a musical language that feels entirely owned by Mary in the Junkyard. Even the more accessible moments carry an underlying uneasiness, stopping the music from ever becoming entirely predictable.
The writing follows a similar path. Personal moments sit alongside extremely surreal imagery, with fragments that feel borrowed from old stories. Dogs, mice, childrearing, strange prayers and repeated references to “you” leave the impression that this is less an exercise in direct confession and more an attempt to turn personal emotion into folklore. Lyrics such as “I Saw God in the Bushes” or “You opened up like a coconut” feel entirely bizarre, yet within the world of the album they become strangely affecting.
For me, the standout moments come in the form of “Crashlanding” and “Thou Shalt Sprout”. “Crashlanding” is the emotional and musical centrepiece of the project. Its lush, widescreen production opens the album up into one of its biggest moments, and it feels entirely earned because of the restraint shown beforehand. It’s peppered with subtle delayed percussion and layered textures, adding depth without ever feeling overproduced. Every listen brings out a new detail tucked into the arrangement.
“Thou Shalt Sprout” takes those same ideas somewhere darker. The lower, roomier drum sound and scratchy string textures give the song a well-worn in quality that fits the lyrics perfectly. It unfolds like an old, disturbing folk tale, blending traditional storytelling with a folk-indebted brand of alternative rock in a way that feels entirely natural.
More than anything, what stays with me after repeated listens is the album’s distinct sense of place. Role Model Hermit belongs to, adds to and is indebted to the folklore of the British Isles. The record creates something that feels unmistakably local without becoming nostalgic. Mary in the Junkyard seem committed to the lineage of folk as storytelling while filtering it through their own weird, tightly wound three-piece post-punk.
This is also what separates them from many of their contemporaries. Among the post-Windmill generation of adventurous British bands, Mary in the Junkyard stand out through the contrast between their three-piece minimalism and the maximalism of their imagination. Their music remains wiry and tightly wound, but this is constantly disrupted by shifting textures, rhythms and atmosphere, rather than scale.
Role Model Hermit is an impressive exercise in world-building. It not only delivers on the band’s early promise but, particularly across its adventurous second half, suggests this is only the beginning of their exploratory musical journey.
Mary in the Junkyard: Instagram | YouTube
Review by Oscar Hackett
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