After months on the road, Amy Love and Georgia South felt the light inside them flickering. Performing as Nova Twins since they were teenagers, their trajectory went from a crawl to a sprint when their electrifying 2020 debut Who Are The Girls? pushed them into the spotlight, and its pace only accelerated when the 2022 follow-up Supernova landed. Having written that second album during the pandemic, they had gotten used to prolonged stillness, but they began experiencing life at a foreign, breakneck new pace when they began touring it.
“We loved every moment, but we weren’t experienced in touring that extensively,” says vocalist and guitarist Amy. “The end result was we ended up feeling rather a bit hollow. You’re away from home, you don’t have any center. You can’t see your friends and family as much as you want to. You’re going from being in the van for eight hours at a time, and suddenly you’re doing a gig. You’re reserving your energy for this moment, for this an hour-long adrenaline rush and then suddenly you just stop. That does something to your mental health.”
It’s a tumultuous experience for any touring band, but Nova Twins had shouldered a greater weight than most. “We always felt like we had to fight to exist, to be a rock band and two women of color doing it,” Amy continues. “We always felt we were on the outside looking in. We had to be strong, we had to be tough.” They were fighting to be seen, fighting racialized preconceptions of their band – particularly that they made hip-hop or R&B rather than rock – and then they fought for others. They platformed marginalized artists through Voices For The Unheard initiative, helped create an Alternative Music category at the MOBOs, even funding a scholarship at London music school ICMP.
Whereas on Supernova, they became larger-than-life versions of themselves spreading an infectious confidence and joy, their new album Parasites & Butterflies sees them lay their armor down and breathe. Absconding to the lush surroundings of Vermont to work with producer Rich Costey, the British pair let the darkness pool forth, cathartically unpacking anxiety, fear and impostor syndrome in their most vulnerable moment captured to tape yet. “We wouldn’t have been vulnerable if it we felt like we weren’t ready to be,” says bassist Georgia. “It was also quite freeing to be able to talk about things that we needed to talk about. It’s always difficult being vulnerable but sharing the songs with people and hearing what they take from it is also very healing.”
Nova Twins had to tend to themselves first, but perhaps, within the personal, there lays buried new weapons for the revolution. Of course, they’re recalibrating, but they’re acknowledging that it is okay, vital even, to not constantly maintain an illusion of unshakable strength. “Everyone’s riding this rollercoaster of emotion,” says Georgia. “Nobody’s going to feel happy all the time. When we do feel down, I think we just allow ourselves to feel it, knowing that there’s only going to be happiness at the end of it soon.”
In this precarious political moment, it’s hardly a sin to feel shaken and vulnerable. “We want to make sure we’re being honest, that it’s okay to not feel that strong,” adds Amy. Now in a position of improved mental health (“I’ve done seven months of journalling!” remarks Georgia,”) they’re in fighting form again. Bursting forth at the peak of 2020’s Black Lives Matter protests, they’re now confronting an even more frightening world. During their recent appearance at the prestigious Glastonbury Festival in their home country, they gave a powerful speech expressing solidarity with the people of Palestine and Sudan, as well as the trans community.
“The people you’re supposed to rely on to bring hope and reason [aren’t doing it], so other public figures are having to raise their voice even louder,” notes Amy. “It’s a fucked up time, and we don’t have the answers, and we’re not going to pretend that we do. But when we’re on stage, we try and just use our platform just to spread love and unity and to remind people that we are stronger together when we are raising our voices.”
