Since its May release, Cwfen’s album Sorrows(out now via New Heavy Sounds) has sustained strong interest, with five months of positive reviews and promotional momentum aligning with its autumnal themes. Singer Agnes discusses the record’s diverse yet cohesive tracks, born from post-COVID creativity and recorded in a remote Scottish studio. The interview explores the band’s emotional depth, future Europe tours, and upcoming material.
Welcome to Cwfen
So, first, I want to welcome you, and thank you for your time. And I wanted to start to ask you how is everything going after, you know, the album was released in May, and we are still talking about Sorrow after, I think, five months. So it’s a long promotional breath in a way.
Yeah, it has been a really whirlwind, intense couple of months. What’s been very interesting is it was great to release it in May, and we’ve been blown away by the response, the reviews, the ratings, the opportunities that it’s afforded us. Deep down, this is an autumn album, right?
“This is an album for when the nights are drawing in”
This is an album for when the nights are drawing in, when there’s a full moon, when it’s getting colder and damper and misty. And I think where it landed in May, it’s had a little bit of time for people to either get used to it and feel it coming into its own, or there are lots of people who are looking for a very autumnal record for the darker days of the year. I feel very much like, spiritually, this time of year is home for Sorrow.
The secret about Cwfen ‘s Sorrow #1
You know, I wanted to ask you how you collected the songs on this album. Each of the songs on Sorrow is different, but it’s like having a buffet of different songs. I start with the starter and I finish with the dessert. It’s like a big puzzle.
I love this metaphor. Let me just say right now, I love a buffet. I am an eater, I love food. I suppose there’s a similar aspect to this for me, right? You have incredible ingredients, and you can make lots of different things from those ingredients, but it stays true to the cuisine—it stays true to the ingredients.
The secret about Cwfen ‘s Sorrow #2
If I think about albums that I love—if I think about Nevermind by Nirvana or anything PJ Harvey produced— or other artists have a very clear sonic palette. The ingredients are very clear, but they can move in different directions and express themselves. I think that’s what we’ve been doing with this record, and I think that comes from being a bit older. We’re all of an age where we’re quite comfortable with those ingredients now, and I more interested in exploring and seeing where they come from.
In this band, we didn’t want to sound like any other band. We didn’t go, “We want to sound like Chelsea Wolfe,” or “We want to sound like Melvins.” We were just comfortable playing music together. Sometimes there would be a really aggressive song and sometimes a very melancholy one, but they all sound like us because we’re using the same ingredients—and I think it’s that, really.
Cwfen: “I think we want the album to take you on a journey”
No, I was positively surprised by the album, let me tell you. Because it completes itself. I’ve never heard such a huge variety that still feels cohesive. There’s a huge variety, for some cosmic abstraction, and yet the songs complete one another.
I’m so glad to hear that. I think we want the album to take you on a journey. If we just made you feel one emotion, that emotion was only that you would felt, that’d be like reading a book where nothing happened. There would be just one chapter.
As someone who likes different forms of art – I like books, theater, classical and jazz music—the idea of something that starts here, and you go on a journey with it, it finishes here. That was not necessarily intentional. But it’s the way how we write now. I think it reflects that things that we are interested in.
“I really think it needs to be seen as a whole work”
The album has singles, but I really think it needs to be seen as a whole work. We wanted to create something with breadth, depth, and emotional intensity—but not the same emotion every time. Something that might feel very tender and then something feral and aggressive at different points. Because we as humans, we have the capacity to be these things once in a different time in our life.
Music as the ultimate cooperative art
And you know, I can also understand how difficult it can be to talk about feelings because you expose yourself in a way. But then you get something back from the listeners—it’s a give and take.
Yeah, exactly. There are definitely some songs on the album that felt more vulnerable. A writer I really love, Ursula Le Guin, talks about music as the ultimate cooperative art. Like it’s most socially democratic art form because it’s made by many people coming togheter and experienced by even more. Everyone brings their own meaning to it. That’s one of the most surprising and delightful things for me, it was hearing people tell us, “This song got me through a hard time” or “This reminded me of a particular moment in my life.” People are weaving their own meanings on the top of the record. That’s a very beautiful and special thing.
“Every song is about a deeper response beyond sadness to something going on around us.”
In an interview with Kerrang, you said, “Every song is about a deeper response beyond sadness to something going on around us.” That made me understand there’s something bigger going on.
Yes, exactly. When we talk about grief, sadness or difficult thing that people have gone through, we don’t really consider all the many layers of that. There’s the instantaneous sadness as a response from an event, and then might be an existential sadness that comes from simply existing at a particular moment in time or to be part of a community or to be witnessing something that’s happening around you.
Cwfen: “There’s layers, complexity and depth”
There’s layers, complexity and depth. And dynamism to all these feelings as well. I think, it was one of the things that I wanted to explore. Because we often think about music in a binary system as “happy” or “sad.” But there are nuanced than that when I think and reflect about that.
And might come through in the sounds of the guitars, the vocals, the words. There are also here layers. I find it funny to think about, but honestly, as a 38-years-old woman, I couldn’t have written this kind of music 20 years ago. I’ve been in bands since I was 13. So, 25 years of playing and writing music. I could have not written this time even 10 years ago. I have more life experience, we all have. It maybe not that the arrangements are enormously complex, but there complexity to the feeling and the subject is.
“We’ve lived enough cycles of good and bad times”
You know, I always think that being 38, and I’m 35.
It’s great, I love this stage of my life.
Let me give you that, I do agree with you. But to get here at this point took sweating, suffering, soul-searching, therapy… you get here because you do the work.
Yes, I feel the same. By this point, we’ve lived enough cycles of good and bad times. It’s very painful, but I’m approaching an era where I know myself and trust myself. Playing music gives me a calmness I didn’t have five years ago.
Maybe this is going off tangent, when are you a woman making music there’s a part of you like “Do I disclose your age?”, “Do I let people assume that I’m younger?.” Do I do any of that? But I’ve realized I’m proud of all the life I’ve lived and to make music at this point in my life. It feels contra cultural in some ways. It might not be what people expect from a woman my age, but I’m proud of it.
The first moment: for the band
You know, I think an artist’s album is always a snapshot of a moment. What moment does this album represent?
There are two moments—one for the band and one for the album. For the band, it was coming out of COVID. I had a “dark night of the soul” moment where I asked myself if tomorrow was my last day, what would I miss that most if I wasn’t able to do it? The answer was music. Prior to that, I have been not playing music live for quite some time. I’ve been writing, but I did stop playing live.
During COVID, I couldn’t write anything. After COVID, as we came over, I had all this pent-up feelings and creativity where I channel all my feelings. So, I decided to write some music and that led to my friends, hearing it. Then, form a band.
The moment for the album
The moment for the album, though, was when we realized this wasn’t just for us—it could mean something to others. We went away to a residential studio in the countryside in Ayrshire to record a few songs. It was beautiful, it was no one around. It was an old farm building. Furthermore, it was a wishing well, there was a tree like a black cat. Nothing but countryside, animals, mist, quiet.
We all stayed together in this place, we are good friends, and we love each other. We enjoy each other’s company and making music together is very easy. That’s why we decided to this in the first place. When we recorded what it was supposed to be four song, we had a lot more songs. We just kept going. And we realized after one day that this is bigger, we thought it was when we started doing that. So, let’s make an album. Let’s stay here.
An important realization #1
How was to realize all this? And get to terms with this realization?
It was a strange sparkly knowing is how I would describe it. We trust each other. And if all of us we we were doing this lovely thing where we would record all day, and then I love to cook. So I’d cook a meal and then we’d sit down at night, we’d eat together and then we’d listen to music together and we were spending all of this time together and we were like, we love this, we love doing so much and we really believe in these songs.
An important realization #2
So let’s just capture all of them. Let’s just capture them and see what happens. Right? If we were being grown ups about it, we probably would have gone, okay, we’re doing all of this out of our own money, our own pocket. How much money is it gonna cost to stay here and do more songs and continue to do this?
We didn’t think about that. We didn’t the rational bit of our brain was we’ll figure that out afterwards because we believe in the songs and we believe that there is something worth being here together. And it was, yeah, it was, it was quite a giddy feeling.
An important realization #3
Like, we were all quite excited about it, but there was a real special energy in that place together with all four of us just staying there with our producer who we love, Kevin. We co produced the album together and he recorded it for us.
An important realization #4
We just because when you do something that you really love, sometimes you’ll skip meals, sometimes you won’t sleep, you’ll just keep doing it. And it was a pure feeling of we love this, so let’s keep going. And then when we came out of it after we listened to the early mixes, I think it was after like two days, we were like holy shit, If this is how good it sounds after tracking it without mixing it, maybe there maybe other people might want to listen to this.
“A time capsule of our friendship music together”
We had no one. It was just us and our money and we decided we were gonna do this for us to just make almost like a time capsule of our friendship music together. And that process of making music together made us realize, oh, maybe other people might want some of this. And my god have they. It has been such a beautiful surprise. But again, to come back to what I was saying at the beginning, trusting our intuition a bit more because we’re a bit older.
“But we believed in the music”
And, again, I don’t think we would have made the same decision ten years ago if we were making this music together. We probably would have gone and looked at our bank balance and had more kind of, you know, can we actually do this? But we believed in the music so much that we’re like, we’ll just figure out a way to make it happen, and we did.
The future European breakthrough in Europe for Cwfen
Yeah. I mean, it’s great. I’m great that you realize that now it was the right time, you know, because forcing things doesn’t even help. Yeah. And it looks like the momentum is piling up constantly for Cwfen because I see dates in UK. The big question is when you guys gonna breakthrough in Europe?
So next year, we have plans. We can’t announce them yet, but there’s a few things on the books already. So we have more things we won’t be able to announce yet, but next year is gonna be a really interesting year for us. So we are going to Ireland earlier in the year, but a couple of things tonight because what has been so lovely is that we have had so much interest from Europe.
Plans and planning
In terms of our album Sorrows, which has blown our minds. It’s been incredible. We have fans in Greece, and we have fans in Spain, and fans in Italy, fans in Germany, and then fans wider. Like, we’ve had a lot of love from, Latin America as well, which has been amazing. But, obviously, in terms of music, it’s expensive and it’s difficult, and there’s a lot of logistics involved in trying to do that.
But what has been really beautiful is that other opportunities have come our way, and so next year is looking to be quite busy for us. I can’t announce where we’re going yet, but we are definitely going to Mainland Europe at some point, which is gonna be very exciting. And, yeah, next year’s gonna be busy.
And more plans and planning
We also want to do some recording next year because we have another album almost not too far off. We have songs, we have more songs than we recorded. We’ve had new songs that we’re writing, we’re still writing, we’re still creating and we’re feeling the creative impulse so we want to keep writing and we would like to release something. We’d like to work sooner. Whether we release it next year, it might be the year after, but the songs are still happening. So we need to we need to work with that while we can.
Closing words
Okay. Well, Agnes, I want to thank you for your time. Hope you did enjoy it. Thank you again.
You’re so welcome. Thank you so much for spending the time in your evening to chat to me and for caring about our album. Like, it means the world to us. Thank you so much.