Mary In The Junkyard are the latest in a recent tradition of highly original British bands whose influences are hard to detect.

It’s so hard these days for a new British band to come up with a singular sound when it seems like everything has been done before.

A few of them manage it: off the top of my head I think of Porridge Radio and Goat Girl, Black Midi and Black Country New Road, none of whom remind me of anyone other than themselves.

The same is true of Mary In The Junkyard; not just their music, which they describe as “angry weepy chaos rock,” but also the unique voice of Clari Freeman-Taylor.

It has a childlike quality, which is not something that normally appeals to me, but it is appealingly strange and fragile, always on the edge of breaking, and filled with emotion.

I love the production on this song, New Muscles, with David Addison’s clattering percussion, Saya  Barbaglia’s muted basslines and her slightly sinister viola floating through the mix; most of all I love the way it adeptly uses that most undervalued quality of space
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The London band, who only got together four years ago, pair their songs with equally unusual videos. This song features a Veg Choir (including a dog) and an authentic Muay Thai boxing match between Freeman-Taylor and Barbaglia, urged on by a rowdy crowd.

Initially composed on an accordion, it was apparently inspired by drummer Addison joining a gym – though the other two seem more than competent at Thai boxing.

The band began when all three members were teenagers; the two girls had met at a classical music summer camp when they were 14 and a camp counsellor assigned them to perform a piece together.

A few years later Freeman-Taylor, who sings and plays guitar, enlisted Addison, with whom she had played in a band called Second Thoughts, and Barbaglia as her backing band, effectively forming Mary In The Junkyard that night in 2022 at the Cavendish Arms in Stockwell.

They went on to become regulars at The Windmill in Brixton (like Goat Girl), releasing their debut single Tuesday in late 2023, and went on to support Wet Leg on their 2025 Moisturizer tour.

New Muscles is taken from their recently released debut album Role Model Hermit, which features other previous singles such Crash Landing, Candelabra and Mouse.