When IDER found themselves sleeping in a church in Barry, they knew this album would be different. The duo of Lily Somerville and Megan Markwick wound up in the Welsh seaside town after a chat with producer Dann Hume established they were on the same page: keen to swerve the breakneck pace of the music industry and immerse themselves in big projects. Hume had recently converted the building into a studio and invited the duo to visit towards the end of 2022. “We’d only met for half an hour over coffee, but we got our stuff together, drove five hours to a church and spent five days writing,” Somerville reflects, chuckling. Though they weren’t in “album mode” at the time, the trip would prove serendipitous. “The first songs came very instinctively,” adds Markwick. “I remember feeling: this is really speaking to what we want to say right now.”
The tracks that came out of that session would provide the sonic and thematic foundations for Late To The World – IDER’s third full-length album, and their most distinctive body of work to date. Since their formation in 2016, Somerville and Markwick have made a name for themselves delivering whip-smart emotional storytelling on a bed of folk harmonies and left-field pop. Their acclaimed 2019 debut Emotional Education set out their stall early as pop auteurs whose unflinching lyrics tap into uniquely female experiences of anxiety, identity and heartbreak. Building on those foundations, their 2021 follow-up shame embraces vulnerability and imperfection in its lyrics, while the instrumentation takes a more confident, dexterous and club-influenced turn.
Produced by Hume and recorded on residency in his church-cum-studio between summer and autumn 2023, Late To The World pushes IDER’s tender sound in a tougher direction. Taking an approach of ‘powerful minimalism’, it’s both bigger in scale and deliberately restrained, honing its contrasting textures of lush electronics and blistering indie rock. The result, they say, is the album they’ve “always wanted to make.”
“We had high ambitions for the sound of this record,” Markwick explains. “We talked a lot early on about how we wanted the production to be super intentional. Sometimes when you’re unsure, you shove everything in – you fill it up with every synth sound, every beat, every layer. But actually what feels more mature for us right now, and what mirrors the [album’s] messages, is stripping things back to the essentials. Everything has its purpose.”
Drawing on a mix of dejected British new wave, euphoric electro-pop and swooning alt rock in the vein of Mazzy Star, the resulting sound is as cinematic as their storytelling – with an added dash of grit and the introduction of live drums (while they’ve always used a live drummer on tour, this is the first time they’ve been laid to record) that reflect the album’s real world footing. “There's a feeling of journeying throughout the record,” says Markwick. “There’s a lot of songs that I would want to listen to in the car, or on the move – you're on this journey, you're moving through life.”
As liberated in subject matter as it is in sound, Late To The World represents IDER’s long and continuous journey of self-discovery both as individuals and as a band. It’s an album borne from weathering the confusion of your twenties and stepping into the clarity of your thirties; its 12 tracks acting as rallying cries for rejecting societal pressures and turning up to life at your own pace.
The opening title track encapsulates the feeling of being a late bloomer and the ways it’s often bound up in social conditioning for women. “Shrinking myself to let him in /Holding my hunger back again/ I tried to be good at everything /I wasted my youth caring about it,” they sing, listing the pressures and expectations thrust upon young women that need to be untangled to find their authentic selves. It’s a realisation that’s both frustrating and freeing, which is mirrored in the track’s gradual crescendo – the yearning vocals, rushing synths and driving percussion swelling until they burst.
If “Late To The World” diagnoses the tribulations of young womanhood, then “Unlearn” offers an antidote. The woozy beat and discordant harmonies give the sensation of transformation – the instrumental constantly warping and shifting as lyrics encourage the listener to shed the accepted truths and learned behaviours that don’t gel with who you are. As soon as they wrote it, it became the “mantra” of the album – its true North. “You do all this shit to fit in and make yourself more bite-sized. You do things to look a certain way, or be a certain way, or act a certain way to enable you to survive in a patriarchal society,” Somerville explains. “But you reach a point where you realise that you don’t have to keep those things on board, and there's a decision to create a new truth for yourself.”
Spanning a broad spectrum of heartbreak songs, exhausted outbursts and sassy pop bangers, Late To The World leaves no emotional stone unturned. “One of the themes of this album is this cross-section of femininity,” says Somerville. “We’ve been told we can’t be emotional and fiery, but also soft and slow. And being able to hold all of these things inside of ourselves at the same time is something we talk about quite a lot.”
Though it’s rarely the dominant energy, anger is woven throughout the album. It simmers on “Quiet Violence”, a dark, brooding track about the “undesirable” parts of ourselves that we hide from others. And it’s the driving force behind “Know How It Hurts,” which was partly inspired by the abortion bans in the United States but transforms the bleak machine of politics into a soaring anthem about personal choice and agency. “We’re conditioned as women to see anger as an ugly thing, but the truth is I feel angry about a lot of things,” says Markwick. “And anger is an important feeling because it can also incite change. It's what gets us riled up and want to move the dial.”
That dissonance between sound and subject matter is something they wanted to lean into overall. “I think it helps with the tone of self-awareness that we like to have through our music,” says Markwick. “We’re deep and emotional, but we also like to have a laugh.” Across the album, earnest admissions are counterbalanced with irreverence. “Zero” pairs skittering indie sonics with defeatist lyrics (“Repeat the pattern ‘til I die /Am I ever gonna change it up?”), while the off-kilter minimalism of “Good Fight” masks the track’s rage outbursts – like telling someone to fuck off with a smile.
The writing process for Late To The World was an “insular” one. All 12 tracks were recorded and performed by Somerville, Markwick and Hume, who the duo credit with fostering a “no mistakes” environment that allowed them to go down rabbit holes, fall upon happy accidents and lean into the playful tone that’s always been a key part of IDER’s sound.
The residency helped, immersing the duo in their own world for a prolonged period of time, but IDER’s music has always had a conspiratorial quality. It evokes a similar feminine intimacy as a Sophia Coppola film – the pinky-swear secrecy of a sleepover, or a marathon gossip session over 2-4-1 cocktails – and their subject matter, while emotionally universal, tends to be generational. On the soaring synth-pop single “Attachment Theory”, for example, the duo probe the zeitgeisty topics of love languages, attachment styles and therapy speak in search of an emergency exit.
If their lyrics feel effortlessly raw, it’s because the songs often have their beginnings in Somerville and Markwick’s real conversations. “We've always adhered to the more personal the more universal,” says Somerville of their writing process. “Sitting down together and figuring that stuff out is the biggest joy in the world – hashing ideas out and getting to ‘no but what do you mean by that?’ and ‘How do we say that better?’ and ‘How do we get to the real truth of this situation?’ It feels like such a fun and important part of our process.”
There’s a softness to Late To The World, but it’s a powerful one. These are not songs of surrender or sadness, though those feelings certainly make an appearance. Rather, IDER embraces feminine energy in all its forms, from warm compassion to biting rage, and channels it into songs of disobedience. Like a sisterly embrace followed by a much-needed pep talk, Late To The World squares up to societal conventions and challenges them – all while having fun, of course.
“The concept of being late to the world is a bit tongue-in-cheek, because it’s like: well, who’s world are you late to?” says Somerville. “Perhaps late blooming means doing things at your own pace and on your own jurisdiction, and actually it doesn't feel very “late” at all”.
“When you reframe it like that it starts to sound like you’re in control of your life and you're doing things your own way,” she adds. “It’s rebellious.”
When IDER found themselves sleeping in a church in Barry, they knew this album would be different. The duo of Lily Somerville and Megan Markwick wound up in the Welsh seaside town after a chat with producer Dann Hume established they were on the same page: keen to swerve the breakneck pace of the music industry and immerse themselves in big projects. Hume had recently converted the building into a studio and invited the duo to visit towards the end of 2022. “We’d only met for half an hour over coffee, but we got our stuff together, drove five hours to a church and spent five days writing,” Somerville reflects, chuckling. Though they weren’t in “album mode” at the time, the trip would prove serendipitous. “The first songs came very instinctively,” adds Markwick. “I remember feeling: this is really speaking to what we want to say right now.”
The tracks that came out of that session would provide the sonic and thematic foundations for Late To The World – IDER’s third full-length album, and their most distinctive body of work to date. Since their formation in 2016, Somerville and Markwick have made a name for themselves delivering whip-smart emotional storytelling on a bed of folk harmonies and left-field pop. Their acclaimed 2019 debut Emotional Education set out their stall early as pop auteurs whose unflinching lyrics tap into uniquely female experiences of anxiety, identity and heartbreak. Building on those foundations, their 2021 follow-up shame embraces vulnerability and imperfection in its lyrics, while the instrumentation takes a more confident, dexterous and club-influenced turn.
Produced by Hume and recorded on residency in his church-cum-studio between summer and autumn 2023, Late To The World pushes IDER’s tender sound in a tougher direction. Taking an approach of ‘powerful minimalism’, it’s both bigger in scale and deliberately restrained, honing its contrasting textures of lush electronics and blistering indie rock. The result, they say, is the album they’ve “always wanted to make.”
“We had high ambitions for the sound of this record,” Markwick explains. “We talked a lot early on about how we wanted the production to be super intentional. Sometimes when you’re unsure, you shove everything in – you fill it up with every synth sound, every beat, every layer. But actually what feels more mature for us right now, and what mirrors the [album’s] messages, is stripping things back to the essentials. Everything has its purpose.”
Drawing on a mix of dejected British new wave, euphoric electro-pop and swooning alt rock in the vein of Mazzy Star, the resulting sound is as cinematic as their storytelling – with an added dash of grit and the introduction of live drums (while they’ve always used a live drummer on tour, this is the first time they’ve been laid to record) that reflect the album’s real world footing. “There's a feeling of journeying throughout the record,” says Markwick. “There’s a lot of songs that I would want to listen to in the car, or on the move – you're on this journey, you're moving through life.”
As liberated in subject matter as it is in sound, Late To The World represents IDER’s long and continuous journey of self-discovery both as individuals and as a band. It’s an album borne from weathering the confusion of your twenties and stepping into the clarity of your thirties; its 12 tracks acting as rallying cries for rejecting societal pressures and turning up to life at your own pace.
The opening title track encapsulates the feeling of being a late bloomer and the ways it’s often bound up in social conditioning for women. “Shrinking myself to let him in /Holding my hunger back again/ I tried to be good at everything /I wasted my youth caring about it,” they sing, listing the pressures and expectations thrust upon young women that need to be untangled to find their authentic selves. It’s a realisation that’s both frustrating and freeing, which is mirrored in the track’s gradual crescendo – the yearning vocals, rushing synths and driving percussion swelling until they burst.
If “Late To The World” diagnoses the tribulations of young womanhood, then “Unlearn” offers an antidote. The woozy beat and discordant harmonies give the sensation of transformation – the instrumental constantly warping and shifting as lyrics encourage the listener to shed the accepted truths and learned behaviours that don’t gel with who you are. As soon as they wrote it, it became the “mantra” of the album – its true North. “You do all this shit to fit in and make yourself more bite-sized. You do things to look a certain way, or be a certain way, or act a certain way to enable you to survive in a patriarchal society,” Somerville explains. “But you reach a point where you realise that you don’t have to keep those things on board, and there's a decision to create a new truth for yourself.”
Spanning a broad spectrum of heartbreak songs, exhausted outbursts and sassy pop bangers, Late To The World leaves no emotional stone unturned. “One of the themes of this album is this cross-section of femininity,” says Somerville. “We’ve been told we can’t be emotional and fiery, but also soft and slow. And being able to hold all of these things inside of ourselves at the same time is something we talk about quite a lot.”
Though it’s rarely the dominant energy, anger is woven throughout the album. It simmers on “Quiet Violence”, a dark, brooding track about the “undesirable” parts of ourselves that we hide from others. And it’s the driving force behind “Know How It Hurts,” which was partly inspired by the abortion bans in the United States but transforms the bleak machine of politics into a soaring anthem about personal choice and agency. “We’re conditioned as women to see anger as an ugly thing, but the truth is I feel angry about a lot of things,” says Markwick. “And anger is an important feeling because it can also incite change. It's what gets us riled up and want to move the dial.”
That dissonance between sound and subject matter is something they wanted to lean into overall. “I think it helps with the tone of self-awareness that we like to have through our music,” says Markwick. “We’re deep and emotional, but we also like to have a laugh.” Across the album, earnest admissions are counterbalanced with irreverence. “Zero” pairs skittering indie sonics with defeatist lyrics (“Repeat the pattern ‘til I die /Am I ever gonna change it up?”), while the off-kilter minimalism of “Good Fight” masks the track’s rage outbursts – like telling someone to fuck off with a smile.
The writing process for Late To The World was an “insular” one. All 12 tracks were recorded and performed by Somerville, Markwick and Hume, who the duo credit with fostering a “no mistakes” environment that allowed them to go down rabbit holes, fall upon happy accidents and lean into the playful tone that’s always been a key part of IDER’s sound.
The residency helped, immersing the duo in their own world for a prolonged period of time, but IDER’s music has always had a conspiratorial quality. It evokes a similar feminine intimacy as a Sophia Coppola film – the pinky-swear secrecy of a sleepover, or a marathon gossip session over 2-4-1 cocktails – and their subject matter, while emotionally universal, tends to be generational. On the soaring synth-pop single “Attachment Theory”, for example, the duo probe the zeitgeisty topics of love languages, attachment styles and therapy speak in search of an emergency exit.
If their lyrics feel effortlessly raw, it’s because the songs often have their beginnings in Somerville and Markwick’s real conversations. “We've always adhered to the more personal the more universal,” says Somerville of their writing process. “Sitting down together and figuring that stuff out is the biggest joy in the world – hashing ideas out and getting to ‘no but what do you mean by that?’ and ‘How do we say that better?’ and ‘How do we get to the real truth of this situation?’ It feels like such a fun and important part of our process.”
There’s a softness to Late To The World, but it’s a powerful one. These are not songs of surrender or sadness, though those feelings certainly make an appearance. Rather, IDER embraces feminine energy in all its forms, from warm compassion to biting rage, and channels it into songs of disobedience. Like a sisterly embrace followed by a much-needed pep talk, Late To The World squares up to societal conventions and challenges them – all while having fun, of course.
“The concept of being late to the world is a bit tongue-in-cheek, because it’s like: well, who’s world are you late to?” says Somerville. “Perhaps late blooming means doing things at your own pace and on your own jurisdiction, and actually it doesn't feel very “late” at all”.
“When you reframe it like that it starts to sound like you’re in control of your life and you're doing things your own way,” she adds. “It’s rebellious.”
