ladylike move seamlessly between folk and post-rock on plaintive new single “Rome (in progress)”

Balancing a delicate line between folk and post-rock, “Rome (in progress)” opens with intricate plucks on a folkloric nylon-string guitar. Georgia Butler’s soft vocals deliver the lines: “Rome wasn’t built with retired lungs / And heavy holding on to friends' old words”.

“Initially, the ‘(in progress)’ was just the name on the voice note whilst we were working on the song, but then it kind of felt fitting to keep it,” Butler explains. “It reflects on the idea that the life you’ve built isn’t ever complete and going swimmingly, there’s always more to come and new people to build it with.”

The Brighton quartet share their new single ahead of playing Best Fit's new music festival, the Five Day Forecast, today (14 January) at The Lexington in London. Their debut EP, It’s a Pleasure of Mine, to Know You’re Fine, is set for release March 13 via Heist or Hit.

The band's lineup comprises Butler (vocals, guitar); Spencer Withey (vocals, guitar, synth); James Ely (drums); and Archie Sagers (six-string bass). Ely, Butler and Withey were friends before they started making music together, while Sagers and Ely were studying in the same course. After a trip to End of the Road Festival one summer, they were inspired to make music together: “We just started playing together, practising in a recital room in the brutalist university campus. We’ve now upgraded to a small, warm, and sticky shared practice space that has a lingering smell of yeast from the bakery next door.”

There is a complex intertwining of the ritualistic cycle of guitar plucks, melodic basslines, and pulsing drums that weaves the arrangement. “We’ve been introducing an acoustic guitar into our writing a lot more; it’s something we initially avoided as we didn't want to commit to being too ‘folk’. But now we’re embracing the ‘folk’ in our own way”, the band explain. As Withey's vocals merge with Butler’s on the second verse, the harmony between their voices breathes intimacy into the melody, lingering between warmth and restraint.

While the vocals are stripped-back and bare, the instrumentation gleams with melodic complexity; textured guitar strings and a hypnotic groove of drums, and bass. “I remember Georgia playing the main riff in practice one day,” Withey shares. “We built it out from a simple structure into something that changed and shifted over time; then we moved it around and put it together again, and then again.”

There is a fineness in the introspective lyrics, fusing the two idioms: “Rome wasn’t built in a day” and “many hands make light work.” Although the lyrics are minimal, each line carries a significant weight. “I sort of felt everything I needed to say was said in those two short phrases,” Butler reflects. “It’s almost my way of questioning those idioms and, in turn, questioning those aged narratives.”