Modern Woman release debut album ‘Johnny’s Dreamworld’
Album ‘Johnny’s Dreamworld’ out now via One Little Independent Records
“Edgy, gritty and exhilarating… one hell of a return” – DIY
“As fully formed as it is full of drama” – Loud And Quiet
“Johnny’s Dreamworld often feels like a hits compilation, more than your typical debut album” – The Line Of Best Fit
“An electrifying return, a fusion of folk-adjacent aspects with scratchy noise-infused indie rock worthy of early PJ Harvey” – Clash
“Johnny’s Dreamworld cements Modern Woman as masters of vivid, story-led songwriting” – Dork
“Through Johnny’s Dreamworld, Modern Woman have created a debut album of truly immense stature” – Louder Than War
“A tender yet confrontational meditation on womanhood, memory and the everyday” – Metal Magazine
“There’s ample fierce flair here to suggest Modern Woman could join the likes of English Teacher at the top of the 2020s class” – Record Collector
‘Johnny’s Dreamworld’ represents the culmination of Modern Woman’s journey from Harris’s early, intimate songwriting project into a full-bodied band capable of folding post-punk, avant-garde, and folk traditions into a live force of dynamic originality. At its heart, the record explores the strange poetry buried within the ordinary. Harris’s lyrics, steeped in literary detail and filmic atmosphere, draw from a fascination with the dark underbelly of the everyday and the contradictions of womanhood.
Harris explains, “A vital theme I’ve always wanted in Modern Woman is the idea of conflicting things, of the tender/harsh, loud/quiet and scrappy/polished. The style of everybody’s playing, drawing from a melting pot of influences, coming together to form something new.”
This interplay defines the album’s sound, delicate one moment, raw and untamed the next. Layers of violin and saxophone stretch across a foundation of propulsive drums and bass, creating something equally methodical and volatile. Harris’s lyrics remain rooted in the female experience; “I find it interesting to explore the rawer side of femininity that is often hidden; girlhood relationships and the complexities of female fixation and obsession.”
Modern Woman’s sound emerged from years of creative refinement. The band coalesced when Harris met violinist and composer David Denyer, who brought a background in experimental composition and textural sound work. Joined by Juan Brint-Gutiérrez on bass and saxophone and Adam Blackhurst on drums, the group forged a style that values the contrasting harsh edges of folk lyricism and noise that collides with melody. Working with producer Joel Burton (Naima Bock, Katy J Pearson, Vanishing Twin), they found a live immediacy that channels the raw intensity of their performances into a sound that is both rich and unpredictable.
‘Johnny’s Dreamworld’ is a tender but confrontational collage of shifting tones and perspectives, of dream logic, fantasy, and lived experiences, guided by Harris’s voice; expressive, incantatory, and alive with curiosity, shaped by a long-standing admiration for vocalists like Björk, Sinéad O’Connor and Cat Power.
The title track and album opener, ‘Johnny’s Dreamworld’, is driven by Brint-Gutiérrez’s serpentine bassline and Blackhurst’s shifting grooves, providing a rhythmic backbone that anchors its surreal energy. Written collectively by the band, its layered strings and spoken-word passages conjure a world built from fragments of film, memory, and imagination. Harris reflects, “I spend a lot of time in my head, and I like thinking of my mind and other people’s minds like a location sometimes, a dreamworld – I like that reading and particularly music can take you into spaces in those places you haven’t explored before.”
On ‘Neptune Girl’, morality is examined through the lens of childhood; what it means to be good or bad before you understand those words. “This was built off an image of growing up in England playing in the roads and fields with a friend who later went up to heaven. Heaven is, I imagine, somewhere near Neptune.” Musically it’s nostalgic yet restless, echoing the coming-of-age unease of early 2000s films like Anita and Me or My Summer of Love, where the glow of adolescence hides an undertone of anxiety.
‘Offerings’ originally appeared on their EP Dogs Fighting in My Dream, released by End of the Road, and has been re-recorded. Harris says, “We wanted to up the ante on this tune. Joel really brought this to fruition, you can hear the shift in dynamics and the tension he created through his style of production.”
On ‘Killing a Dog’, the band capture the uneasy boundary between the urban and the natural world; “The feeling when you come upon something visceral or natural that makes you feel really horrible and gives you a grounding back into reality. This is an older song, and at the time I was really into writers that explore that in different ways like Alice Munro, Algernon Blackwood and Max Porter.” Here, Denyer’s floating string parts, both processed through tape and performed live, combined with Burton’s cello and wind-section composition, create something delicate, dark and tense, contrasting with the simple richness of the bass and drums. It features guests Nathan Pigott on saxophone and Kirke Gross on cello.
‘Daniel,’ one of their oldest songs, was written in North Wales while camping near a lake Sophie visited when she was young. It embodies what she describes as a “spirit feeling”. Sparse and intimate, it offers a quiet breath between the record’s more abrasive moments, and was recorded live with Brint-Gutiérrez and Denyer.
Rooted in the strange domesticity of memory, ‘Fork/Heart’ imagines a home as a place where its objects and their histories have their own pulse. “I think some locations, places, houses have this weird energy running through them, as if they’re alive,” she says. “This song is about how collected things (objects or memories) inside a home build this aliveness, and can even feel threatening when they’re not nice things.”
Blackhurst’s drums and Denyer’s bassline create a taut undercurrent on ‘Blessed Day’, while Brint-Gutiérrez’s saxophone veers between light and aggressive. Lyrically, the track peers “underneath the suburban front, to reveal something disturbing,” she says.
‘Dashboard Mary’ captures the comedown following a feeling of escape, a gradually unfolding narrative that builds towards a rapturous climax. “This is a song that I wanted to write like a film. I wanted to confront the feeling of the ‘morning after’ and the decisions made during that time of exhilaration the night before.”
Closing track ‘The Garden’ revisits one of Harris’s earliest compositions, a slow, dirge-like meditation inspired by a young Joan of Arc hearing voices in her garden. Sparse and haunting, Denyer’s pump organ deepens the song’s atmosphere, grounding Harris’s storytelling in something sacred and spectral.
Since their formation in London, Modern Woman have built a reputation for performances that blur the boundary between poetry and noise, commanding stages at End of the Road, Latitude, The Great Escape, and Green Man. Harris, a literature graduate, writes with a novelist’s precision and a performer’s urgency, while Denyer, Brint-Gutiérrez and Blackhurst bring the intensity of modern composition, jazz and punk backgrounds to the table. This year they signed to One Little Independent Records, the home of Björk, Crass, Laura Misch, Penelope Trappes, and more.
‘Johnny’s Dreamworld’ cements Modern Woman as one of the UK’s most distinctive new voices, a band intelligently and purposefully exploring the relationship between beauty and brutality.
Photo credit: Sandra Ebert
Artwork credit: Sandra Ebert
Tracklist
- Johnny’s Dreamworld
- Neptune Girl
- Offerings
- Killing A Dog
- Daniel
- Fork/Heart
- Blessed Day
- Dashboard Mary
- The Garden
Production Credits
Produced by: Joel Burton
Engineered by: Joel Burton
Additional Engineering: David Denyer & Adam Brown
Mixed by: Oli Barton-Wood
Mastered by: Felix Davies
Track Credits
All lyrics by: Sophie Harris
All songs written by: Sophie Harris
Exception: Johnny’s Dreamworld written by Adam Blackhurst, Juan Brint-Gutiérrez, David Denyer & Sophie Harris
Arrangements by: Adam Blackhurst, Juan Brint-Gutiérrez, Joel Burton, David Denyer & Sophie Harris
Instrumental Credits
Adam Blackhurst: Drums, percussion, backing vocals
Juan Brint-Gutiérrez: Bass, saxophone, backing vocals
Joel Burton: Electric & acoustic guitar, piano, synthesisers, mellotron, backing vocals; wind & cello arrangements
David Denyer: Violin, viola, samples, percussion, tape, bass, organ, piano, acoustic guitar, backing vocals
Kirke Gross: Cello
Nathan Pigott: Saxophone
Sophie Harris: Lead vocals; electric guitar
Live dates
6th May – UK, London – The Lexington
7th May – UK, Wrexham – FOCUS Wales
14th May – UK, Brighton – The Bootlegger (AIM TGE)
15th May – UK, Brighton – The Hope and Ruin (No Friends in the Industry)
15th May – UK, Brighton – UnBarred Brewery & Tap (JOY – Alt Escape)
16th May – UK, Sheffield – Get Together Festival
16th May – UK, Leeds – In Colour Festival
23rd May – UK, Southampton – Wanderlust Festival
4th Jul – ES, Catalonia – Vida Festival
1st Aug – UK, Oxfordshire – Wilderness Festival
21st Aug – UK, Brecon Beacons – Green Man Festival
4th Sept – UK, Dorset – End of the Road Festival
16th-19th Sep – DE, Hamburg – Reeperbahn Festival
27th Oct – UK, Leeds – Hyde Park Books Club
28th Oct – UK, Edinburgh – Sneaky Pete’s
29th Oct – UK, Manchester – Now Wave Pub
30th Oct – UK, Bristol – The Croft
25th Nov – UK, London – The ICA