Nova Twins talk 'Supernova' success and their forthcoming third album • Interview • DIY Magazine

It’s no secret that the last three years have been dizzying for Nova Twins. Having kicked off their second album era with the storming ‘Antagonist’ back in October 2021, since then things have only got wilder for the duo, formed of vocalist / guitarist Amy Love and bassist Georgia South. Following its release in June 2022, ‘Supernova’ has earned them a slew of plaudits and award nominations – including two BRIT Award nods and a shortlisting for the 2022 Mercury Prize – while their live shows have continued to grow bigger and more frenzied with every year.

Having released their 2020 debut ‘Who Are The Girls?’ during the pandemic, the upward trajectory of their second was an even more surreal trip for the duo; the result has been the kind of head-spinning ascent that’s left them still reeling at what they’ve racked up in its wake. “I definitely feel like, when we’re in the middle of it all, we don’t actually process it,” Amy nods. Even during their current period of relative downtime, Nova Twins are still all systems go, with a handful of shows in Paris scheduled for a few days’ time.

“It’s just happening, and you’re too busy trying to take on the next challenge, and you’ve got all these different emotions, like excitement or nerves or other things that you’re processing,” she continues. “I think we’ve only just stopped for the last few months and now it’s like, ‘Oh my God, yeah, we did do those things!’ We’ll watch a video back or someone will say something to us, like, ‘Oh, you did this girls, how did it go?’ and we’re like, ‘Oh yeah, we did do all of that…’. Then you really acknowledge and can appreciate that we have had an amazing journey when, especially in this climate, it’s really hard for bands.”

While this whirlwind of success is something that the pair are undoubtedly grateful for, there’s always another side to the coin: the question of how to follow it all up. Set to launch in early 2025, the band’s third album is now complete, but working on it wasn’t without its trials. “It was a more challenging album for sure,” Georgia confirms. “This felt more like the natural pressures of a second album, because ‘Supernova’ was obviously written in the pandemic under less pressure.”

Having spent a significant time on the road over the last few years, readjusting back to quote-unquote normal life also fed into that general feeling of uncertainty over their next steps. “We got back and we had to decompress for a month or so because we’d been nonstop touring,” Amy explains. “We were like, ‘We don’t know ourselves, we haven’t lived, we just lived in a van’. But when you do decompress, loads of things come to the forefront and obviously life hits you; suddenly we’ve got loads of inspiration and stuff to say, but then sometimes we’ve not. Sometimes it was difficult because we just felt nothing. Then we’d take a step away from it, come back and it would be better.

“It was just a really human experience writing this album,” she continues, “because the first album, we had all our lives to write it, and the second album, no one really had any expectations of us. But then this one, it was like: ‘Supernova’! Bang! Okay! There were pressures but then we had to really be like, ‘Hang on a minute, that’s not why we got into this’. You have to leave that aside. As long as we both love the end result, that’s what matters. We just went with our old guns for that.”

“We’d do the Foo Fighters shows and then, in between, we’d record the album in Vermont. I think it was perfect.”

— Georgia South

Written throughout last winter (“In darkness!” Amy chips in), the gears really shifted for Nova Twins’ third full-length when they headed over to the States earlier this year to open up for a little rock band called Foo Fighters. “When we went to America and did the Foos shows, we literally had been in our bedrooms just writing this album for four or five months,” Georgia says. “We felt so good doing them because we love to play live. We’d do the shows and then, in between, we’d record the album in Vermont with Rich Costey. I think it was perfect that we got to kind of be a live band again and be in that space.”

Having worked with the same production team for both their previous releases, on Album Three the pair decided to try something new. Spending around three and a half weeks in Costey’s residential studio over two different sessions, the experience provided a much-needed contrast to the colder climes of the initial writing process. “Vermont was beautiful,” Georgia nods. “It was amazing to record it [there], just surrounded by so many fields and nature, which was really great for us too.”

The decision to work with Rich wasn’t just down to his stellar production and mixing CV, either. “He’s done a lot of bands that we love,” Amy nods to his eclectic resumé, which boasts the likes of Muse, Death Cab For Cutie, Biffy Clyro, Jenny Lewis and Sam Fender, among many others. “It was just something that felt right, and his energy is very calm. There’s no ego with Rich, he is just a really nice guy.”

While they’re still keeping most of the album’s details hush-hush for now, there are a few more tidbits that they offer up. “There are no synths on the album,” Georgia confirms. “It’s still very much [us using] our pedal boards as you know how we love to create things live.” “We’ve used three drummers,” Amy adds. “The drums were done remotely, so one was in LA, one was in the Netherlands and one was in Milton Keynes…”

As for lyrics, they’re keeping similarly schtum for now, but it does sound as though there may be a concept at play… “As ever, we just write what we feel at that moment,” Amy notes. “I think what’s really fun about this album, lyrically and sonically, is that we play on a contrast of light and dark; you know, kind of opposites. You really go [between] different things.” What’s in store might be a secret for a little longer yet, but one thing’s certain: after the big bang of their career-changing ‘Supernova’, there’s no holding Nova Twins back.

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