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When you think about it, every relationship is a house of some kind.
Some are built slowly and carefully, brick by brick, until they become the safest places in the world. Some appear sturdy from the outside but are weakened by the cracks hidden deep in their foundations. There are some which we leave behind by choice, and others that are taken from us before we understand what it means to lose them. No matter how they’re built though, all of them hold something: memories, ghosts, warmth, grief, love, hurt and perhaps most importantly – hope.
That image is what sits at the heart of ‘Every House We Built’, the long-awaited debut full-length from Liverpool-formed trio Exploring Birdsong. Across twelve songs, it finds vocalist Lynsey Ward, bassist/keyboardist Jonny Knight and drummer Matt Harrison turning inward for the first time, exploring relationships in all their forms.
From friendships and romance to the family ties that we’re born with and those we find along the way, it’s a collection of songs that carefully reflect on the connections we make in our lifetimes, exploring how long it can take to build something meaningful – and how quickly it can fall apart.
An album about collapse and rebuilding, fragility and renewal, ‘Every House We Built’ is Exploring Birdsong at their most ambitious, but also their most human. A trio built on instinct, trust and the strange synchronicity that can only come from a decade spent writing together, it captures a new version of their band. Still impossible to put neatly into one box, still determined to explore every weird and wonderful influence, but now more certain than ever of who they are.
THE SOUND
When we trace it back, the story of the album really begins with ‘Archipelago’.
Born from a demo which Lynsey had been working on in the background since 2022, there was no intention behind it kickstarting the album process, but when it landed in Matt and Jonny’s inboxes – they knew it was something special.
Collectively deciding that it would be the first track of the band’s debut album, the opener serves as a bold introduction to this new chapter. Opening with the stark intimacy of piano before blossoming into something vaster, it captures the journey of the album in miniature form. Vulnerable, cinematic and texturally rich, it places the listener immediately inside the deeper, more unguarded world of Exploring Birdsong.
“If somebody finds Exploring Birdsong and goes through the history of the band in chronological order… you begin at the beginning,” Lynsey says.
“Our first EP is essentially just piano, bass and drums. There are some strings, and one or two synths, but really, it’s just the core elements of our sound. Then you move to ‘Dancing In The Face Of Danger’, and there are more flavours, more ingredients. There’s synth, and there’s that extra stuff that we’re building into the sound. Now, through the singles we put out last year and the album, it’s expanded further still.”
That expansion is everywhere you look on ‘Every House We Built’.
There’s the tightly-wound, spiralling paranoia of ‘42’ and the inescapable melodic pull and chaotic heaviness of ‘Romanticise’. The shameless nod to Kate Bush’s ‘Hounds Of Love’ era in ‘I_You’ and the stunningly heavy ‘You Like It Best When It Hurts’. Regardless of which influences are most dominant though, every track still sounds unmistakably like Exploring Birdsong.
Having forged a sound that is almost uncategorisable, it makes perfect sense that ‘Every House We Built’ feels less like an attempt to define their band, and more like a statement that definition is no longer the point.
“I like that there isn’t really a ceiling for us,” Lynsey says.
“There’s so much that we find to be influential and inspirational to our music, and we’re finding it all the time. Whether it’s influence from the past or new influences, we have so much access to it all now. It’s easy for us to pick at everything and play around with it.
“It’s about finding different ways to transform what we’ve been doing since 2019. That’s so exciting for us, because we honestly don’t know where it’s going to end up. I don’t know where the logical conclusion is. I hope that this record is a clear expansion on what people have heard from us before, but it is by no means the ending point. We’re just getting started, really.”
THE LYRICS
Until now, the trio have been drawn to existing stories, ideas and conceptual frameworks when it comes to finding lyrical inspiration, but ‘Every House We Built’ changes that. For the first time, Exploring Birdsong are writing directly from their own experiences, stepping into grief, heartbreak, anxiety, self-sabotage, absence and love with a new level of openness.
That could easily have become too exposed, but whilst these songs are personal, they’re never specific enough to feel lived-in. Within each one, there’s enough space for listeners to walk through and find rooms of their own.
“I feel that we have struck the balance effectively,” Lynsey says.
“We want to share this, and we want you to feel like you can have an experience with these songs that speaks to your own personal life, without forcing you to listen to me talk about mine in explicit detail. We want these songs to be a point of connection.”
That connection is central to ‘Footprints’, a track written about the grief for someone lost before you were old enough to truly know them. Exploring the strange ache of carrying that absence without the vivid memories that usually come with mourning, it originated as an idea put forward by Jonny.
“I feel so proud that ‘Footprints’ has made it to the point that it’s at now,” Lynsey nods.
“It shows so much strength in acceptance, when you’ve moved through all of the seasons that you can with something. You just have to sit with what you’re left with, and as time goes by, it puts distance between you and that complex experience. You never get over it, it just moves further away.”
“Jonny is at a point where he has a family of his own, but he’s reflecting on something that he will carry for the rest of his life. He’s spoken about it in that song so beautifully, and I don’t know if I could have written something like that. I’ve got so much respect for him as a writer.”
That idea of surviving what doesn’t fully leave you runs throughout the album. ‘Arrhythmia’ finds hope in the image of night-blooming flowers, reflecting on the desire to be comforted by someone no longer there. ‘Cartography’ is centered around the wish for someone to arrive with answers when you feel lost.
Elsewhere, ‘Romanticise’ and ‘The Warning’ both step into toxic dynamics, while ‘You Like It Best When It Hurts’ turns its gaze towards people seemingly unable, or unwilling, to break cycles of destruction. Refusing to flatten difficult experiences into neat lessons, it’s a living, breathing document of what it means to lose, to rebuild, and to keep reaching for connection no matter how hopeless things seem.
“When we have experienced those moments, it’s been the creation that has been the light,” Lynsey says.
“I look at my own reasons for writing these songs and I think that there has to be some good out of it. If I’ve been this hurt, if I’ve been knocked down, if it’s really got this bad… these songs have to be the reason why that was a good thing. At least it has allowed me to make something.”
THE COLLABORATORS
At the centre of ‘Every House We Built’ is the trust between Lynsey, Jonny and Matt.
Having spent a decade in each other’s lives, experiencing every moment through each other’s eyes, the strength of their relationship is what allows songs as vulnerable as these to exist. Because of that, whilst each idea may have initially been brought to the table by one member, it never feels as though the album is documenting that person’s story alone, collectively shaped into something that belongs to all three of them.
“It’s the first time that we’ve put to record the way that we actually speak to each other, and the things that we have lived through together,” Lynsey says.
“We’ve always had a very open, vulnerable friendship with one another. We are very close, so now we’re at the point where we can explore that space and create something from it. It’s so easy to encourage each other to do it, because it’s like we’re having a conversation.”
That trust extends outside of the trio too, with the band recruiting the talents of musicians within their wider creative circle to contribute the real strings and pipes you can hear throughout the album. Able to recognise when someone else can bring something vital to the world they’re building, enriching the sound with extra layers and textures, it’s those little touches that help bring Exploring Birdsong fully to life.
“We are so fortunate that in our circle there are very, very talented people,” Lynsey smiles.
“We’re not so dogged that it’s our way or the highway. If we know there is something that somebody else can do better, we’re more than happy to ask them to do it. You can’t capture the same feeling if you don’t have access to real players, and we’re lucky to have met some incredible musicians throughout our careers. We have people around us who are not only talented, but who believe in what we are trying to achieve and are happy to be a part of it. A lot of the magic of the album would have been lost without them.”
THE TITLE AND ARTWORK
As the trio worked through the tracklist in order, putting the final touches on each part, the recurring imagery of houses, homes, foundations, and shelter became impossible to ignore, appearing again and again across songs written by all three members.
“We noticed this pattern. It was like, ‘Oh, we’ve mentioned houses quite a lot. Why have we all done that?’” Lynsey says.
“Why is it so in front of us? I still don’t know, but it was. Matt said, ‘Hear me out… What about ‘Every House We Built’ as a title?’ Me and Jonny were like, ‘Yeah, it’s that.’ It just is.”
The artwork arrived in a similarly serendipitous way. Matt had been driving with his fiancée Paige when a small house by the side of the road caught his attention. Surrounded by larger, more opulent homes, it looked out of place, but in exactly the right way. Older, smaller, empty, but full of the suggestion of the life that once lived inside it.
“It made him think of how many houses are out there which are quite cosy and relatively small, but hold memories of family, Christmas days, all of these sentimental things. Then, you have these massive houses, where it can run the risk of being a bit soulless and not so lived-in,” Lynsey says.
“That image fit perfectly with how we wanted to speak on the album. We’re talking about personal memories and personal recollections, and this little house seemed to neatly put it all together.”
The band later learned that the house was due to be refurbished, making the photograph feel even more connected to the record’s central themes. If you stop by that exact location now, the house no longer looks like it does in those images. Just like the relationships explored across the album, it exists now as memory, evidence of something that has already changed.
“You look at a house like that, and so many people think of their grandparents, those really special memories you have to access from a long time ago,” Lynsey reflects.
“There are good and bad memories that you can have in a house, but there’s still that house. There are strong feelings that we want to make people relive or get into.”
THE FUTURE
For all its grief, collapse and heartbreak, it’s important that ‘Every House We Built’ doesn’t end in ruin.
Named after the street where Jonny first moved in with his wife, closing track ‘Meadowlands’ is a song about love as shelter, about choosing to build something with another person despite knowing how fragile everything can be.
Really, that’s where the magic of Exploring Birdsong’s debut comes from. It understands that houses fall. It understands that people leave, relationships fracture, and places that once felt safe can become unrecognisable. But it also understands the importance of continuing to try. The importance of retaining the hope that it isn’t all futile.
That spirit sits at the core of ‘Every House We Built’, and with it Exploring Birdsong have created something wholeheartedly ambitious and emotionally resonant, but also something that opens countless doors for whatever comes next.
Across twelve tracks they have built a house of their own, one filled with love, grief, warmth, anxiety, nostalgia, and heartbreak. A deeply human record, capturing so many of humanity’s complex nuances within its vivid world – now, all that’s left is to invite people inside.
