Mary in the Junkyard have been generating buzz since the tail end of 2023 when their eerie single “Tuesday” and its even eerier video introduced the experimental rock trio to a wider audience than the local London scene they’d been garnering a reputation within. It wasn’t long after that “Ghost” assured us that theirs was a name to watch for, with their debut EP This Old House solidifying that status today. Over the course of four songs (including “Ghost”), Clari Freeman-Taylor’s dreamy vocals and abstract lyrics float through a bed of instrumentation that pulls from post-punk, dream-pop, and even jazz, occasionally coalescing in ominous tones that bring Radiohead to mind.
With the EP out today, the trio are sharing a track-by-track breakdown of This Old House, along with a brand new music video for the track “Goop,” which illustrates a familiar quarantine-era brain rot as an interpretive dance in dilapidated surroundings performed by a figure in a ghillie-esque suit. “It’s about being inside too much—so much that flies go in your eyeballs,” the band share of the track’s lyrical themes before referencing the near-improvisational sounds of viola and percussion that define the track. “We really tried to explore the different textures we could make with just the three of us playing.”
Check out the video and the band’s EP breakdown below, and stream This Old House here.
1. “Ghost”
Sometimes I feel like a ghost when things are changing, and this song is about wanting to become a lighter and freer version of myself, learning how to feel human again after a hard time. The “Ooh-wee-ooh” is a ghostly call which comes in and out of the song. At the time it was written, I was thinking a lot about moths and their attraction toward light, which prompted the video narrative of a moth always looking in on us, eventually finding a way to become human and live inside of the house. We’ve all got moth-like compulsions, whatever the light may be coming from. The choruses for this one are cathartic, and we love it when people howl along after “I’ve been howling at you.” We recorded the howls for this while we ran around the kitchen of Copper House, which is the studio where we made the EP.
2. “Marble Arch”
This song is about my sister. When she left home she was really terrible at staying in touch, and I felt her absence heavily as we grew up in an elderly and isolated village. I was thinking about her being engulfed and eaten by the city that she was in—she seemed very small compared to its monstrousness in my head, and I was very scared for her. This is a song of furious love, the type you only really have for your sister (“I think of how brave you are, and strange you are”). We didn’t do much post-production on this one apart from a guitar line played through a string pedal toward the end—I love the emotion it brings out in the song.
3. “Goop”
“Goop” was written about the pandemic. It’s about being inside too much—so much that flies go in your eyeballs. We really tried to explore the different textures we could make with just the three of us playing. I love Saya’s viola part at the end, it’s very heart-wrenching. I can imagine her playing it in a tuxedo at a restaurant to a couple that are breaking up. “She scratches her head, she might have nits / I think I’ll stay away.”
4. “Teeth”
“Teeth” is a big one. We wanted it to feel really freaky—it all builds up to that one big scream and then kind of descends into chaos. It’s such a live song, but ended up being the most produced. We added a lot of texture in the studio to make it bigger. It was written about an unhealthy relationship with a toxic power dynamic—it’s all about the fallout from that, how difficult it is to part from somebody you’ve grown up around (“You sink your teeth in, so we’re never apart / And you hold on so that nothing will ever be enough”). The line “this old house” prompted the name of the EP, because it’s all about memory and growing up. The house is a safe haven which can also become a place of fear, where small fears can distort and become monsters. Hopefully there’s a good balance of light and dark there.
