mary in the junkyard – Crash Landing
London trio mary in the junkyard have announced their debut album Role Model Hermit, due July 3 via AMF Records, and shared its lead single “Crash Landing”. The band — Clari-Freeman Taylor (vocals, guitar, cello, viola, violin, harmonium), Saya Barbaglia (bass, viola, violin, backing vocals), and David Addison (drums) — wrote the album between the UK and US and recorded it in London during summer 2025 with producer Oli Bayston (Boxed In, Kelly Lee Owens, Alexis Taylor). It follows their 2024 EP This Old House and a run of standalone singles that earned them spots on NME covers and a three-month North American support run with Wet Leg on their MOISTURIZER tour.
“Crash Landing” opens with low harmonium drones — warm, almost organ-like — before the strings and Barbaglia’s bass settle in behind Freeman-Taylor’s voice. It’s a slow-building track in a trip-hop pocket, and the restraint early on is what makes the eventual swell land. Freeman-Taylor’s vocals shift from something almost conversational into something more serious as the track opens up, and that transition is where the song earns its keep. She says the track came out of time on the road: “We fell in love with the warm low drones of the harmonium. At the time we were listening a lot to Life Without Buildings on tour, so I think I was channelling some chirpy, scattered poetry when we were jamming. This one is really joyful for me, it is all about change and growth.”
That Life Without Buildings reference is worth sitting with — there’s something in Freeman-Taylor’s phrasing that shares that band’s circling, offhand quality, a voice that doesn’t quite follow the melody it’s supposedly singing. The lyric “you opened up like a coconut” shouldn’t work as a centrepiece image, but it does, and I suspect that’s exactly the kind of off-kilter specificity the band is reaching for. The song is simultaneously about emotional unavailability and something more intimate — Freeman-Taylor has described it as “about fear and how men often rely on keeping their emotions secret, and how you have to crack them open. To be the only one that’s seeing one side of someone, it’s trapping.”
Role Model Hermit is described by the band as “full of stories, memories and past lives” — something you can get lost in, like a forest or a cave. “Crash Landing” suggests an album that earns those terms without leaning too hard on atmosphere for its own sake. It’s one of the stronger debut singles out of the UK this year, and it’s here because it pulls off something genuinely tricky: a ballad with real structural weight that doesn’t overstay its welcome.
Tracklist:
- Mantra III
- Blood
- Seek And Destroy
- New Muscles
- Myrtle
- Peter The Dog
- Crash Landing
- Welcome break
- Candelabra
- Thou Shalt Sprout
- Mouse
Tour Dates Europe:
- Thu. July 2 — Kingston, UK @ Banquet Records *
- Fri. July 3 — Brighton, UK @ Resident *
- Sat. July 4 — London, UK @ Rough Trade East *
- Sun. July 5 — Bristol, UK @ Rough Trade Bristol *
- Mon. July 6 — Nottingham, UK @ Rough Trade Nottingham *
- Tue. July 7 — Liverpool, UK @ Rough Trade Liverpool *
- Wed. July 8 — Leeds, UK @ Vinyl Whistle *
- Thu. July 9 — Manchester, UK @ HMV Manchester *
- Fri. July 10 — Glasgow, UK @ Assai Glasgow *
- In-store performance
