mary in the junkyard

mary in the junkyard are a three-piece from London, formed around singer and guitarist Clari Freeman-Taylor. Their songs tend to be built from sparse, exploratory beginnings, with bass and drums leaving a lot of open space before the arrangements thicken and the guitars turn abrasive. Freeman-Taylor's vocals move between a near-whisper and something closer to a wail, and the writing draws as much on folk phrasing as on post-punk.

They emerged from London's small-venue circuit in the 2020s and have been grouped with a wider set of British bands working in a similarly loose, improvisation-tolerant version of guitar music.