Mumble Tide are on the rise

While those of a spiritual volition may refer to it as fate, the pair are more inclined to view it as “weird, random luck,” as Rogers puts it. Whatever you call it, the duo known as Mumble Tide is certainly a case of the right place and the right time.

This is because the pair met in the late 2010s after Rogers answered a Gumtree ad listing for Leonard’s first group, The Desert. Having begun penning music at a young age, she eventually found putting her creative output under her name uncomfortable. Instead, she joined the outfit after being picked up by a management company. She recalls now that there was a lot of pressure involved in the project. “There were a lot of angles within and externally…it did feel like everything was at an arm's length,” she recollects. But, for all of its issues, it was here she’d meet Rogers.

As a teenager in Cornwall, he struggled to find like-minded souls to connect with. It was after yet another failure to find his people again – this time at university – that he decided to up sticks to Bristol, “because that's what people from Cornwall do.” After a year there he spotted the Gumtree listing, and the rest is a bit of a complicated (but not really) history.

That bureaucratic nightmare of a first band, filled with a blur of managers and conflicting creative directions, left a barren tundra for the pair. “Mumble Tide was all about us escaping that entirely and doing something kind of shit and fun,” Rogers explains. A collaboration was always on the cards as Leonard references them as being "weirdos that rely on music." With Leonard penning the lyrics and taking up vocals, Rogers became a de facto composer and multi-instrumentalist. The two eventually found their creative spark leading to a romantic one, with their artistic and personal journeys entwining for a long while.

It wasn't until 2020 that things began moving properly for the band. Their first single came in April, closely followed by the Love Thing EP. Eventually coming to release three extended players, each established the duo's fluid musical nature – never abiding by any one sonic subset but instead dipping their hands into whatever felt comfortable on the alt-pop to folk spectrum. During this period, they spent their time at Leonard’s parents' house, in a village outside of Cambridge, eventually setting up there as a default Mumble Tide HQ. Everything was fairly rooted in them as a romantic couple – until they decided to break up. This opened up a whole new realm for them to navigate.

“When we split, I was a bit like, Oh shit, maybe I shouldn't do music anymore. Maybe I should be a real person with a real job,” Leonard remembers. A few years after their debut single, things weren't as they expected. At the time, they were living in London after leaving her parents, and deciding to stay, Rogers left to go back to Bristol. “It was a sad, rough time,” she reflects now. But it did prove creatively fruitful. “I didn't stop writing songs, because that's what I like to do. And then we were like, well, we might as well do an album,” she says.

Might As Well Play Another One is also a more considered outing from the pair. It’s as full-bodied as they have ever sounded and breaches new territory in a cohesive nature, helped in part by producer Stew Jackson (Massive Attack). Its poppy sensibilities are worn brazenly, relishing in the judicious melodies that highlight Leonard’s deeply thoughtful and personal lyrics. Opener “mawpao” brings her wrestling with the future, while single “Pea Soup” is a rickety alt-pop number, “Maybe I wasn’t the love of your life / And maybe that’s alright,” she sweetly ponders.

On the Mumble Tide through-line, the pair have distinctly separate answers. “For sure it's Gina's writing, like, 100%. I think she's got a very unique worldview,” Rogers says. Leonard, after casting a sideways glance at her bandmate, counters: “I think it's more the two of us coming together, it's such a comfortable space. I think both of us are quite awkward people who don't necessarily feel like we fit in, and we both really need music." It’s this that they attribute their bond to since day one. “Yeah, I think it's totally just that we are two people who are quite uncomfortable in a lot of situations. Neither of us has tonnes of confidence and definitely didn't have tonnes of confidence in our 20s. This place that we stumbled on, working together, is a place where we just both felt comfortable,” Rogers admits.

“We both really admire each other, like we both respect each other's skill sets, and I'm genuinely so excited about what you come up with," she motions to Rogers. "And I think hopefully vice versa. It's a real buzz, as lame as that sounds. Our roles, I think, are quite defined, and it always works very easily and flows out in a way that is a really fun and exciting process where there's no conflict. Really, we just align,” Leonard sighs.

It's why there's no real sonic regularity to Mumble Tide. The pair indulge in whatever sparks may light up. "It's something we struggled with for a while," Rogers says. "Because I think we're always a little bit on the cusp of fitting in and not fitting in.” “We've explored, a few different genres within what we do,” Leonard adds, “Like, some of it, in the past, has been more emo or more punky or whatever, and then other bits have been more folky.”

Their pair's influences are divergent in that, by their nature, Leonard is more honed into lyrical wonders, while Rogers is focused on sonic expansion. "My mum's Irish and there was quite a lot of folk around the place. My dad's bit more into rock and stuff, but I got a guitar given to me when I was 14 for Christmas, which I hadn't asked for but immediately I was obsessed with playing it and writing, and this is a bit embarrassing, but I was mad into Jack Johnson," Leonard laughs. "I'm quite lyric focused, I suppose. Back when I was younger, I liked Bob Dylan and Nick Drake and the classics. But I also love The National and Phoebe Bridgers and Conor Oberst...that was something we bonded over, wasn't it, that kind of scene? And a lot of pop as well. So for me, melody and lyrics are the things that get me excited."

Rogers explains his influences as being deep-rooted, particularly thanks to his dad's affinity for ELO, "I totally inherited it, and now I'm a mild super fan of ELO as well," he chuckles. "I love a big chorus, or a clever way of doing a big chorus, and ELO just as a thing is very maximalist and weird, but also super poppy, but terrible lyrics,” he laughs. After scoring a job at HMV and other records stores, his tastes expanded fantastically, so much so that he admits now “I think I'm oddly hard to please, I don't like anyone or anything,” he chuckles before backing down from the ego statement of the year “No, I like loads and loads of stuff. Which loads of people do now, right? It's a real mixing pot now, which is why music and the people making music is so interesting at the moment, because everyone's drawing from loads of spaces and inspiration. We bring the two approaches together.”

Instead of bowing to pressure to conform, Mumble Tide have surrounded themselves with a close-knit team – a group intent on helping them take this escapism project of theirs farther than any of their previous outings may have shot for. Signed to Breakfast Records, and with a manager they eagerly bounce ideas off, being able to recuse themselves from their own echo chamber has meant the future is bright for Mumble Tide.

“We believe in it because we feel so much power from it,” Leonard enthuses. “I think we are ambitious with it, but at the same time, we understand that the industry is full of loads of bullshit, and ultimately, there's so much you don't have control of.”

After all, control is often just an illusion – sometimes things happen, and everything works itself out. No matter your outlook, it’s best to stay in on your lane, which for Mumble Tide is the same that it’s been since its inception: “Staying up late and making music together and getting lost in it, and regardless of what happens, that's the thing that we both hang on to," Leonard ends.