Live Review + Gallery | Divorce @ Trinity Centre, Bristol

Divorce

Trinity Centre, Bristol

11th December 2025

Photography by Ella Nicholls (@elnichphoto)

George Ward

Freelance journalist and online editor for CLUNK. Can be found out and about in Bristol, finding cheap records or having a pint on King Street.

Divorce return to Bristol to show off their excellent debut album ‘Drive To Goldenhammer,’ one of our favourites of the year

Though it should be expected from a sold-out show, Bristol’s Trinity Centre felt especially buzzy last week; even for the support band Curiosity Shop, with no released music, the church was nearly full. Curiosity Shop’s take on folk and country was charming and, with traditional instruments such as accordion (to make its surprise second appearance later on), the sound was warm and familiar. We’ll be keeping an eye out for a single soon.

As the crowd continued to grow, huddling together out of the cold, Divorce took to the stage. The band have had a big year, releasing their debut album ‘Drive To Goldenhammer’ back in March, and travelling the UK to show it off, with notable stops at Green Man and Glastonbury. Its blend of indie rock, pop and alt-country was one of the nicest surprises of the year, with catchy songwriting, warm production and a confident album structure.

Opening the set with ‘Karen,’ maybe the band’s heaviest track on the album, was a bold move, but one that showed the crowd they weren’t messing around. The track is so satisfying to hear live, with co-vocalist Tiger Cohen-Towell beginning soft and ominous, before slowly swelling into a yelled climax. When the explosion inevitably comes, the band match their energy with monstrous riffs.

Most of the set was pulled from ‘Drive To Goldenhammer,’ with the entire album played in full. ‘Jet Show,’ with its nostalgic bass-driven pulse, was a highlight, as was ‘Pill,’ with its bubbly, off-kilter first half perfectly balanced by the gorgeously soft second half. Cohen-Towell’s vocals here were the real highlight, softly singing the lyrics: “She swings so close to me and back again, come close to me, go back again away from me”. The lyrics are simple, but sang with complete sincerity; whenever Divorce’s songwriting feels overly romantic or sentimental, it is this sincerity which keeps them grounded.

The main set closed out with ‘Antarctica,’ the band’s biggest single and one recently re-released featuring Marcus Mumford, and ‘Lord,’ the highlight from the debut album. Hearing these tracks live was such a perfect way to round out our year, with each song holding the rare quality of feeling immediately timeless, despite releasing in March.

On ‘Lord,’ the band best demonstrate how vital their co-vocalist set up is. The way Cohen-Towell and co-vocalist Felix Mackenzie-Barrow‘s voices meld together is effortless and incredibly satisfying, each taking lead at precisely the right moment, equally comfortable with a lead vocal line as they are delivering a tasteful harmony. It is on ‘Lord’s final chorus, where this hits the hardest.

For the encore, we were treated to the older banger ‘Checking Out,’ before the night was rounded out with ‘Hangman’. Here was yet another song that was transformed on the stage, jumping from a less memorable album track to a perfectly obvious closer within seconds of it being performed. The final repeated lines “I care about you already, I wanna lift you up, I wanna lift you up” are filled with so much kindness and, again, sincerity. It is moments like these that make Divorce such a special band and the perfect gig to round out my year.