We chat to the band at End of the Road about debut album ‘Johnny’s Dreamworld’ and what comes next.

Modern Woman returned to End of the Road this year with a storming set on the Woods Stage on the Thursday night. The band have a long relationship with the festival, who put out their earliest releases on their own label and continue to ask them back for bigger and bigger slots. This year, Modern Woman released their long-awaited debut album ‘Johnny’s Dreamworld’ through One Little Independent. The collection marks the culmination of their work since debut single ‘Juniper’ released in 2021, synthesising their avowed founding reference points of folk and heavy guitar music. A few months on from that release, the band are already beginning to think about what comes next. We caught up with songwriter and guitarist Sophie Harris and drummer Adam Blackhurst after their End of the Road set to hear more.

Firstly, on ‘Johnny’s Dreamworld’, how did you look to differentiate this record from what we’ve heard from the band previously?

Sophie: I think it was difficult [to differentiate] because this record was an amalgamation of a lot of things we’ve been doing from the time that we started the band to the time that we managed to release it… So I don’t think there was necessarily a conscious commitment, I think it’s just what naturally came from the beginning of us playing together as a band.

When Modern Woman started, I was quite interested in folk music but I was also really interested in heavy music and I liked the place where they connected. And I think that was initially the direction that consciously I wanted to bring to Modern Woman. But then as the guys joined it started to develop and become something that was unique and our own sound because of the people that were in the band.

When we move on to future records, I’m excited to have that process to really think about how we want the music to develop and what direction we want it to go in before we start writing the music.

What was the hardest part of ‘Johnny’s Dreamworld’ to realise in studio?

Sophie: Finishing it – I was a bit of a nightmare for getting it finished. I think it’s always the case, I hear, when you release your first record, you get quite particular about things because you’ve heard those songs so many times and you hear them differently everyday. I think it was a learning thing for me to try and let go of it.

Adam: You say you’re a nightmare but everything that you did was for a very good reason, and it turned out well because of it. So I wouldn’t be too hard on yourself. You were a nightmare, no question about it. But you were right to be.

So did realising this album feel different to making your EP?

Sophie: 100%. With the EP, we were very very new as a band, we’d only played a handful of shows. And that was just the songs we were playing live we just wanted to get down, really. So it developed quite quickly and we were still interested in experimenting with a lot of different things and quite nervous about going in certain directions. When we did start to record the full LP, we tried to embrace that a bit more and see if it would develop naturally. And I think it was important to have that time between the EP and the album to realise those songs in the studio.

What are you working on at the moment? Have you begun to think about what comes after ‘Johnny’s Dreamworld’?

Sophie: We’re quite excited to move on to the next record. We love ‘Johnny’s Dreamworld’ but as I said it took quite a while for us to finish it and to realise it as a whole thing. So we’re very excited to start playing new things.

What does your creative process look like at the moment?

Sophie: I think it’s quite, I want to approach it in quite a deliberate way now. I also think  it’s important that we move in a direction where we can push ourselves, I think that’s very important. I want to go in with an idea and step back before getting into the nitty gritty with everyone. And I think everyone feels the same.

Adam: It definitely feels like we’ve got this undefined notion already of what we’re going to be doing and Sophie’s got some phenomenal things in the works. I suppose we’re kind of aligning it all at the moment.

Finally, since we’re at End of the Road, who you have such a strong relationship with, what are your favourite things about the festival?

A Peacocks! I also personally love the layout, I think it’s one of the most attendee-friendly layouts. You go to lots of festivals where if you lose your crowd, you’ve lost ‘em. There’s something about End of the Road that if you just hover round certain areas there’s like a stream of friendly faces and you just fish them out. It’s also just so perfectly curated and all in all it’s just a great time, such a lovely sendoff to summer.

Sophie: We played a show very early on at a venue called Laylow, which I don’t think exists anymore. And Simon who runs End of the Road was at the show and just really liked it and said he wanted to release our first single and then afterwards our EP on the label. And we were really excited to do that because they’re obviously such an amazing festival and they really support artists in every way. They were so relaxed, they just wanted the music to come out. And we obviously went on to record the LP with One Little Independent and they were really supportive of that too, they just wanted to platform the music. I think that’s what makes the festival so special is that it is so purely catered to artists and supporting artists in every way.