On their long-awaited debut album Morning Ritual, Chartreuse have found light in the darkness, sifting through the ruins of an anxious age in order to find hope in it. “There’s a strange optimism in pulling all your negative traits out, revising & reviewing them, then putting them back, in order,” says Mike Wagstaff.
Chartreuse resist easy definition. The Black Country four-piece have been close friends since they were at college. In 2013, Mike & Harriet Wilson started playing folk music together and a year later, they added a rhythm section, with the addition of Mike’s brother Rory on drums and Perry Lovering on bass.
They’re very close friends and the songwriting is an extension of this intimacy. Their songs might find Harriet singing Mike’s lyrics, or vice versa. “It takes a lot of trust, because the songs aren’t short of emotion,” says Harriet. The album shows off Chartreuse’s spectacular range to full effect and there is a clear sense of figuring it out as Morning Ritual reaches its end, “I get to the end of the record, and love that it leaves me wondering, what’s next for this band?” says Harriet. Hope, certainly, and a sense of possibility, with a defiant refusal to be boxed in.