Mary in the Junkyard spent years on London’s small stages before making their first album. On Role Model Hermit, the trio bring folk tales, shifting rhythms and classical strings into indie rock. Their songs leave room for strange turns, but keep a clear sense of the people caught inside them.
Released in July 2026 through AMF Records, Role Model Hermit earned a place in Bandcamp’s Best Albums of Summer 2026.
Stephanie Barclay described the trio’s approach as muted indie rock by and for the art school set
. For IRC readers, the pull is the blend of strong stories, restless arrangements and a band still finding new uses for its skills.
On Role Model Hermit, a small scene can open onto a much stranger world.
Meet mary in the junkyard
The London trio are Clari Freeman-Taylor on vocals, guitar and strings, Saya Barbaglia on bass, strings and backing vocals, and David Addison on drums. The two string players grew up making classical music together. Freeman-Taylor and Addison had also played in an earlier project.
As they told Stereogum’s Margaret Farrell, the band began gigging regularly in 2022. They took opening slots wherever they could find them. The 2024 EP This Old House came next, so Role Model Hermit marks their album debut after several years of work.
Their touring biography charts a busy path: UK and European shows, a North American support run with Wet Leg, and a KEXP session. They made the album with Oli Bayston. Bandcamp’s credits place the sessions at Studio Orbb in London.
Three Songs From Role Model Hermit
“New Muscles” — Growing Into Yourself
“New Muscles” starts with a drummer joining a gym. It is an everyday spark for a song about change. In their official release biography, the band explain that it began on accordion, inspired by Addison’s new routine. That small choice becomes a way of writing about confidence and leaving a cramped life behind.
Bandcamp reviewer Jennifer Kelly highlights Freeman-Taylor’s gentle singing, Addison’s wayward drums and Barbaglia’s unruly viola. Her description catches the song’s central tension: change can bring confidence and leave you off balance at the same time. The band give that awkward feeling room to move.
Watch “New Muscles” on YouTube
“Crash Landing” — Intimacy on a Larger Scale
In her Bandcamp Album of the Day review, Kelly describes organ drones and an arrangement that grows in scale. Freeman-Taylor keeps the vocal close and quiet. That gives “Crash Landing” a strong point of tension: the setting expands, while the singer’s focus stays inward.
No Ripcord’s Juan Edgardo Rodríguez picks it as an album highlight about moving on from a difficult relationship. That reading gives the sweep of the music a clear purpose. A private hurt takes on a much larger shape, with the voice still at its center.
“Mouse” — A Fable About Recognizing Someone Again
The closing “Mouse” takes the band’s gift for storytelling further. In Stereogum’s interview, Freeman-Taylor explains how imagined past lives became a way to describe a familiar feeling: meeting someone you seem to have known before. A fisherman and a mouse give that sense of recognition a strange, vivid form.
The fable allows a private feeling to become a story someone else can enter. Love, memory and time all find a place within it. Kayla Sandiford’s Line of Best Fit interview explores how the song almost gave the album its title. As a closer, it makes a case for the writer’s imagination as the band’s strongest asset.
What Other Reviewers Are Saying
Writing for Atwood Magazine, Olivia Martinez called the album a vivid, emotionally resonant act of worldbuilding
. No Ripcord’s Rodríguez described an attention-grabbing debut album
. He also questioned whether its many mid-tempo songs show the full range of the trio’s talents.
For a first listen, follow “New Muscles” through “Crash Landing” to “Mouse.” The route moves from a small comic spark to a private hurt, then into fable. Together, the songs show why mary in the junkyard belong on an indie-rock shortlist: they have stories worth telling and a taste for taking the long way into them.
Stream Role Model Hermit
For Listeners That Like
Big Thief, Squid and Joanna Newsom. These are reference points from the linked reviews and interviews.
Official artist links · Buy or stream on Bandcamp · Spotify · YouTube
Release details: official Bandcamp. Biography: High Road Touring and the interviews linked above. Photograph: Daisy & Tomos Ayscough, via Pitch Perfect PR. Song commentary draws on the credited reviews, reporting and band explanations.