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In the current climate of political scandals and cultural division, it’s tempting to bury your head in the sand. So tempting, in fact, that Marmozets’ Becca Bottomley was hesitant to emerge from her seven-year-long hibernation. “I kept thinking ‘maybe I’m meant to just settle down and be a mum,’” the frontwoman reveals today. “I wanted that simplicity, after taking so many risks in the past.”
Becca, however, has never been one to play it safe. While her life has changed drastically since 2018, entering a new era of motherhood and adopting the surname of her husband-slash-bandmate Jack Bottomley, the sharp-tongued defiance of Becca MacIntyre still burns within her. If somebody has to take a risk and speak out, Becca is up to the challenge.
That’s where ‘CO.WAR.DICE.’ comes in. Set to drop in May, Marmozets’ comeback record is a howl of sanity in a confused, painfully wounded world. “Everyone is a coward, in some way,” Becca reflects. “Whether it’swar leaders hiding behind military tactics, or people who fill their heads with conspiracy theories and are terrified of the world, cowardice is everywhere.”
The feisty, formidable frontwoman is no exception. After retreating into the shadows following 2018’s ‘Knowing What You Know Now’, there was a fear of abandoning the quaint maternal refuge she had forged in her years out of the limelight. “When writing this album, I actually ran away at one point – I ran to the train station and Jack was begging me not to go like a scene in a movie,” she laughs. “I was scared.”
Again, the theme of cowardice was burning in Becca’s mind. It was almost a sign; the frontwoman had to overcome her own cowardly instincts in order to be a guiding light for others. As the recordcritiques modern tragedies, fake news and warmongering moral panic, itfeels like a pat on the shoulder, an acknowledgement that the world is fucked, but we can face the storm together.
Just as Becca shook off her fears, cowardice needn’t define you – it’s all about how you handle it. As Marmozets’ signature wallop of alt-rock swagger and punk attitude unfolds, ‘CO.WAR.DICE.’ provides ample bursts of strength to support you through your fears. Whether you’re after a heavy hit of gutsy, eye-rolling sarcasm like ‘You Want The Truth’, or if you need some danceable escapism like larger-than-life romps like ‘Cut Back’ and love-drunk thumper ‘Running With The Sun In Your Eyes’, Marmozets have got you covered.
“We want people to push to pursue their purpose,” Becca notes. “That can come with its own challenges, but if you overcome that cowardice, that fear, and lean into your purpose, you’ll find the way.”
THE TITLE
Marmozets’ seven-year hiatus was eventful to say the least. Not only was the birth of a baby Bottomley enough to awaken Becca’s protective maternal instincts, but the entire world was forced to confront a slew of life-altering historic events. From a pandemic sparking mass hysteria and mourning, to the devastation of war echoing across the globe, it’s unsurprising that people have found solace in their own cowardly bubbles of safety.
Suddenly, it felt like the world was holding its breath, quivering in fear. “At times it was overwhelming,” Becca sighs. “You’d sit at home and see all these wars breaking out, everything unfolding about Trump – and you took in that fear, and it slowly became a part of you. Then it got worse because you know there’s probably more awful things going on than you’re being shown on TV.”
Soon, Becca felt like she was confronted with the notion of ‘cowardice’ everywhere she turned. “Perhaps it’s frequency illusion, but that word was suddenly everywhere,” she recalls. “I really began to consider what ‘cowardice’ is, what it can represent.”
To unravel the depths of what ‘cowardice’ truly is, Becca began to break it down – quickly landing on ‘CO.WAR.DICE.’.
Considering Becca had been ruminating over the cruel and cowardly nature of war, it felt fitting that ‘WAR’ sat firmly in the centre of the word. After some more investigation, she realised she’d also inadvertently stumbled upon an age-old military tactic: ‘WAR DICE’.
“Militaries across history have actually used a dice in certain areas to figure out tactics,” Becca explains. And this isn’t Becca becoming a tinfoil-hat conspirator – military generals have used dice and counters to run through potential attacks for decades. It’s a method that reportedly dates back to the 19th century, right up to the Second World War and perhaps further.
The revelation infuriated Becca. It felt like armies rinsing their hands of blame, a cowardly handing over of responsibility to the dice. “We’ve got these elites quite literally rolling a dice to decide which country they’re going to pick on next,” the singer exclaims, outrage clear. “It’s randomly deciding who lives and who dies. It’s cowardly.”
Beyond the military implications, the album title also holds a more personal significance for Becca. “I feel like I’ve been a coward,” she admits solemnly. “My own fears have gotten in the way in the past, but I decided to stop being a coward. This is me stepping up. Now, I’m giving this my all.”
THE SOUND
‘CO.WAR.DICE.’ mingles a familiar palette of Marmozets flavours; there’s a classic mix of mathsy riffs, alt-rock vitriol and a dash of noisy, garage-rock-infused carnage. Throughout, Becca is just as wild-eyed and savagely cool as ever, spitting in the face of fear and letting it know who’s boss. Take the triumphant ‘A Kiss From A Mother’; reminiscent of a Western stand-off, the track sees a gunslinging Becca asserting that “nothing gets past me”, cocking her pistol with a manic, wailing banshee of a war cry.
Though, the record is also scattered with softer textures – namely those of nature. Take closing track, the winding, mystical ‘Keep Going Darling’. It muses over cowardice, how debilitating it can be, but chooses to carry on regardless. “The track was a really beautiful moment,” Becca smiles. “When me and Jack wrote that song, we always felt like it was missing something. It had all these beautiful verses, but it needed one extra thing to feel right – so we all got together in our practice space, the whole band, and we played the track through and followed our instincts. And it was perfect.”
Becca notes that the moment seemed powered by “the sun shining in” on the band. It felt like a natural force, encouraging Marmozets to fulfil the vision of the track. “I just had this vision of this big burning sun getting nearer and consuming us all – but it was a happy feeling, not some infernal end-of-days fear,” she laughs.
“The track feels like you’re stood watching a beautiful sunset – the kind where you just watch it, soak it in, let it unfold,” she continues. “We captured that beauty of the moment. It was this beautiful ride, all of us together. And we close out with the twinkly Nashville-tuned strings at the end – it’s one of my favourite guitar sounds at the moment.”
While ‘CO.WAR.DICE.’ is filled with anthems of fury, there’s plenty of natural seeds of hope to qualm your woes too. “Nature-inspired” grooves flourish throughout, with Becca insisting there is an almost spiritual “healing” that can be found in the natural world.“We can all live beautiful lives if we focus on the right things,” she explains, a glimmer of maternal tenderness colouring her words. “Light powers me up; if you’re struggling to make sense of the world, sometimes you just need to escape into nature to make sense of things.”
Escaping into nature has been a staple of Becca’s life in recent years, even seeing her working in a hedgehog sanctuary. “I’ve always felt connected to nature,” she grins. “I remember watching Snow White when I was so young, and thinking that was me – I’m meant to be running through the forest, chatting to all the animals.”
“I’m not trying to be all hippy-dippy about it, but we should all try to connect more with the world,” she insists. “And sometimes that can even be appreciating how terrifying it can be; the sea is ferocious and uncontrollable, but that’s the beauty of it. That’s life. We need to have respect for it.”
THE LYRICS
Dig into the lyrical depth of ‘CO.WAR.DICE.’, and the natural influence is evident. ‘Cut Back’ beams with light as it worships the “sunny weather”, while ‘Swear I’m Alive’ is equally as nature-inspired; “I wrote it during COVID, and nothing felt right. I was doing yoga, eating healthily, meditating, even reading the Bible to try and find some meaning – it felt like I’d tried everything.”
As Becca explains, all it took was basking in a beam of natural light to discover what the track was destined to be. “That day in particular, the warmth felt nostalgic,” she recalls wistfully. “It took me back to my childhood, when I was running around on my favourite beach in the world, Sea Palling on the Norfolk coast.”
“The chorus is essentially a surrender,” she admits. “It’s me allowing myself to be fully immersed in nature, in memory, in something beautiful. Every time I sing it or hear it, it takes me back to that beach, and it takes me back to being in that living floor, and I just feel so flooded with light and life.”
Of course, in Becca’s words, she’s not being entirely hippy-dippy” with the nature-loving flare. There’s plenty of tongue-in-cheek nostalgia to offer, like ‘New York’ haywire, dazzlingly cool howl reflecting on when the band were jetted out back in the day to sign a life-changing record deal.
One of the more cutting tracks comes in the form of ‘You Want The Truth’. It’s an in-your-face anthem mocking all those scouring the net in search of ‘The Truth’ and decrying all the ‘fake news’ that doesn’t align with their delusions. “It’s making fun of all the irrational fear out there on social media – mainly people who are into conspiracies,” Becca jokes. “It’s mocking the people who go online thinking they’re prophetic, the people who gain a following by screaming ‘don’t read the news!!! They’re coming for you!!’”
“But it is worrying how many people do believe those kinds of conspirators,” she adds. “At the time we wrote it there was some guy in New York that said drones were flying around opening portals…”
There are a few older cuts thrown into the mix too – namely ‘Dandy’, which is nearing a decade old now. It was written when Becca first infiltrated the Bottomley household, “temporarily” moving in with Marmozets’ guitarist Jack (“well, it didn’t end up being temporary,” Becca laughs).
“We’d drank a bit too much wine and were smoking ciggies in the kitchen, when a sibling walked in,” Becca recalls. “They were quite stressed. And I just wanted to write this song to encourage them. It was like I was reflecting on the feeling they weren’t able to deal with on their own.”
THE COLLABORATORS
While Becca and Jack’s early days of songwriting took place in the Bottomley family kitchen, nowadays it takes place in the pair’s own home. Though the chainsmoking of ciggies has taken a bit of a backseat, and the more sober Becca now opts for a cup of tea, the collaborative writing process remains the same.
“We wrote the whole album in our own bedroom,” Becca explains. “We were lucky enough to be able to get a deal off the back of it, then go record it properly in a studio. It’s amazing to think we were trusted to do that – because were an unsigned band who hadn’t performed in so long.”
Despite the pair writing the album together, Becca goes on to insist that this record belongs to Jack. It’s something that makes the guitarist, who had previously been lurking silently in the background, burst out in laughter. “I’m being serious!” his wife cries out. “He has worked so hard on this. We wouldn’t have one if it wasn’t for Jack. He has been the rock behind this whole album, and I want people to know that he’s a genius.”
Despite Jack’s humble laughter continuing to ring out, Becca doubles down: “He’s laughing, but we wouldn’t be in this position if it wasn’t for him!”
Jack’s influence also meant that Becca never truly gave up on her creative side. While she admits to a fear of returning to the stage after having her daughter, Jack and her have never stopped writing. “We actually formed a two-piece called Peace Pills for a while,” the singer reveals. “But, when we realised some of the demos were really strong, our managers were like, ‘Let’s get the boys back involved!’”
Once Becca’s brothers, Josh and Sam MacIntyre, were invited back, that’s when things got a little harder. “It had been 10 years since we’d lived under the same roof, and we’d lost that communication,” she admits. “Over the years we’d stopped reaching out to one another as often as we used to.”
“Recording the album was easy, but the tough part was learning to be together again,” she continues. “In that sense, it was healing; we had to lay everything on the table, say sorry for things, hug it out, remember how things work when we’re all under one roof.” With the aim of working together once again, the recording process quickly became a form of “family therapy”. And Becca is thankful for it. “Bands can sometimes tear families apart, but this band has actually brought our family closer,” she smiles.
THE FUTURE
Moving forward, Marmozets aren’t going to be slowing down any time soon. After all, they’re certainly no cowards. “We’re going to keep building this musical family, keeping it strong,” Becca says. “We’re already close to having another album already. We’ve got so much more to give.”
After having a first round of shows under her belt, Becca notes that there’s something magical about reconnecting with her former self. “At first, I felt like I’d never been in a band before,” she adds with a frown.“There was so much imposter syndrome, like I was a stranger coming along, pretending to be part of this band. It’s bizarre. But it’s been like meeting my old self again.”
However, any feelings of imposter syndrome have been aided by the support the Marmozets gang have received – from fans and peers alike. “I can’t honestly believe a band like Biffy Clyro just asked us if we fancied playing Finsbury Park with them – after we’d not performed in seven years?” Becca barks, incredulous. “What the heck? I still can’t believe it. That doesn’t happen to everyone! We feel very blessed.”
Even if Becca is slightly traumatised by the new 2am bedtimes (“I’m usually in bed by 9!”), she’s not taking anything for granted. As she overflows with hopes for the future, her enthusiasm shines out of her. Amidst the plans for “coffee shop dates” to catch up with fans, new music videos and new music, you can feel the warmth radiating off of her, the joy she feels when her creative side is able to flourish.
“We want to be involved in everything – we want this to come from us and only us,” the frontwoman insists. “I want this to be right this time, and I want to be focused and present. We’re giving this 100%, don’t you worry!!”
