“You’ve got to die and be reborn between albums,” begins Henry Wade, guitarist for The Orielles, describing the foundations of the band’s fourth studio album, Only You Left. “It comes naturally,” adds singer and bassist Esmé Hand-Halford, “it’s not something we consciously do.” Through this process of creative renewal, the Manchester-based trio – completed by drummer Sidonie Hand-Halford – have managed to weather a pandemic, defy the fickleness of a trend-led music industry, and emerge, phoenix-like, with something familiarly Orielles, yet altogether different.
Recorded in two locations – Hydra and Hamburg – over the summer of 2024, the 11 tracks of Only You Left sees the band consolidate the bold experimentation of their previous LP, Tableau (2022), with a return to the more stripped-back, song-led approach of their early origins. “There’s nothing more trad than a three-piece,” quips Henry, in reference to the band’s decision to return to their roots as a trio. Originally from Halifax, the Orielles first came to recognition in 2018 with their debut album, the indie-rock Silver Dollar Moment, which is approaching its eighth birthday in February 2026. “These things come in like seven year cycles. So we’ve come in like a full circle back to a familiar place, just as different people.”
According to Henry, the first ideas for Only You Left came in May 2023. Esmé had bought a freeze pedal, which allowed her to play around with sustained notes on her guitar – these heavy drones would later form the basis for the tracks ‘Wasp’ and ‘Three Halves’. In the lulls between touring, the band began to meet up and record their practice room sessions, later analysing the voice notes to the finest detail.
“We recorded everything on our phones, every snippet,” explains Henry. “We went so deep into what each song needed or what we wanted to hear from it.”
Whereas the process of Tableau was semi-improvisational and part-written in the recording studio, Only You Left was fleshed out through a series of intense writing sessions dating from May 2023 to the summer of 2024. Each song was refined meticulously and became its own distinctive work. “ It almost felt really novel for us to be writing as a three-piece and really, really crafting these songs,” remarks Esmé. “ But Tableau gave us that confidence to know we could go into a studio and pull things together in that setting under the time pressure.”
The band have been collaborating closely with producer and engineer Joel Anthony Patchett – whom Esme dubs the honorary fourth member of the band – since Silver Dollar Moment. His influence on Only You Left is apparent: “Joel brings an extra level of interpretation and deep listening,” says Henry, “and it’s always exciting to explore that.”
“He’s constantly talking us through every step of what he’s doing and getting us really, really involved with that process as well,” adds Sidonie. “And we’re just kind of learning together and making these mistakes and discovering things together.”
Her words outline the Orielles’ extensive involvement in the production of Only You Left, an aspect of their musicianship which has evolved gradually over time. The decision to record in Europe came partly from budget concerns, and partly from a vision of how the album should sound.
“As soon as we booked the studios, certain songs just took these paths,” explains Henry. “We were picturing recording it in this cold, clinical space in Hamburg or this laid back, bohemian, church-esque space in Greece. And then that just completely influenced how we played and how they were written.”
He goes on to describe the studio in Hydra, a converted carpet factory with little gear and plenty of opportunity for bleed, an aspect of recording which the band have grown to love. The room’s resonant frequency, an ‘E’ note, was drawn upon for the track ‘Embers’. Beginning with a syncopated pulse, decorated with ambient pops and clicks, the track builds slowly underneath a lightly-sung verse reminiscent of Portishead. As Esmé introduces the refrain, “only you left, only you right”, layers of guitar and piano cascading outwards and upwards.
It’s an effective transition from sparsity to fullness, one of the many contrasting dualisms which characterises Only You Left. “ We had this vague imagery of wood versus metal,” says Esmé. “Hamburg was metal and Hydra was wood. Everything fell naturally into either category.”
Her lyrics are a similar exploration of paradoxes, inversions and wordplay, left ambiguous for the listener to make their own interpretations. The title of ‘Tears Are’, for example, is an unanswered question, a half-phrase, according to Esmé: “You could think of something deeply human. But you could also answer it in a completely linguistic sense and think of a tear as a symbol or an image.” The lyrical uncertainty is mirrored in the music: initially catchy and anthemic, the track gradually dissolves towards the end, culminating in a darker, more minor take on the original motif.
By the same token, the meandering, grungey ‘Three Halves’ was so-baptised when Henry stitched three recordings together on Ableton and needed a working title. What began as a temporary placeholder soon became a theme for Esmé to riff on, a metaphor for the trio and their shared connection.
The final track, ‘To Undo the World Itself’, has hints of Tara Clerkin Trio in the repeated, reverb-drenched vocal melodies, but also leans towards the expansive post-rock of Mogwai and Explosions in the Sky in its cathartic forward-motion. The track is paired with ‘You are Eating a Part of Yourself’ as a double single, and the lush guitar melodies of the latter share a similar dark euphoria as they gradually submerge the listener in a glitch-laden tide of feedback and noise. Coupled with the rising harmonic progressions is a pervasive sense of bittersweetness, of time irrevocably passing by.
“We maybe wanted to subconsciously disguise this album as something that felt more light and easy on the ears,” suggests Sidonie. “But it’s much more melancholic. It’s not a deeply sad album. It’s just leaning into the beauty of sadness a little bit.”
Her words go to the very heart of Only You Left. By exploring binaries and contrasts, the Orielles are finding shapes in the chaos and confusion of the world around us – it’s an undertaking that benefits from more than 15 years of close collaboration, driven by friendship and the artistic compulsion to find meaning in music.
Words: Gail Tasker.
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