Nova Twins Tickets

Sometimes, the universe gives you a sign, just when you need one. Arriving at the studio of producer Rich Costey in Brattleboro, Vermont, Amy Love and Georgia South were searching not just for the sound of what would become Nova Twins’ stunning new album Parasites & Butterflies, but a fresh start after a relentless, exhilarating, dizzying, even traumatic few years of their rocketing career. Looking skyward on the day of their arrival in the Green Mountain State, the pair witnessed a total solar eclipse – a celestial phenomenon symbolising new beginnings, transformations, and a catalyst for reinvention.

“It was a magical moment,” Georgia South recalls. “It gave us chills. It was like watching the whole concept of Parasites & Butterflies come to life before our eyes.”

To understand what South truly means in that statement requires understanding the journey Nova Twins have been on since the turn of the decade, which in four short years has seen the Mercury Music Prize and two-time BRIT Award nominated duo explode from the independent UK rock scene to become one of the most widely championed, cherished and change-inspiring names in UK music, full stop. Theirs has been a rise without precedent, which has not so much ripped up the rulebook as rewritten it in their own unique design.

There have been the show-stealing festival appearances everywhere from Glastonbury to Summer Sonic via Sziget, Hellfest and more; the stages shared with such luminaries as Bring Me The Horizon, Foo Fighters, Muse; the litany of DSP and radio playlisting. Rage Against The Machine’s Tom Morello has heralded “an incredible band”; self-professed fan Elton John, meanwhile, has labelled them “phenomenal”. Anyone looking to decorate their bedroom wall with the duo’s press covers – Kerrang!, NME, Total Guitar, Alternative Press, the list goes on – is in no short supply of material. The figurative mantelpiece has long been replaced by a trophy cabinet stuffed with gongs bestowed on them at the Women in Music Awards, the AIM Awards, the Kerrang! Awards and the Nordoff & Robbins O2 Silver Clef Awards. Their Mercury Music Prize shortlisting in 2022, meanwhile, inked Love and South’s names in the history books as the first black rock band to garner a nomination – a victory not just for the duo, but music culture.

You can understand, then, when South and Love say that they were overcome with a whole new emotion when they sat down in the dog days of 2023 to shape their thoughts on their next move: pressure 

“It was challenging at first, because we’ve not stopped for the past few years,” South says. “I think we really needed some time to decompress and process everything we’ve been through, inside the band and in our lives outside it – but we also felt the need to keep moving forward, to write the next chapter. Nobody was waiting for our first two records (2020’s Who Are The Girls? and 2022’s Supernova). We had to figure out a way to navigate through the attention and the pressure we were feeling for the very first time

“I don’t think the journey of those years really afforded us the time and space to process the changes in our lives, how we were feeling, who and what we’ve grown into,” Love continues. “Suddenly we came back to the real world, and it was like being hit in the face by the harsh light of day. It left us in a position where all we were able to do was to be brutally honest, with ourselves, and our fans.”

Within that process, however, came a clarity of vision. “We had to remember what had worked for us so far in our career,” Love says. “And that was to simply not give a fuck.”

It is through this mantra, and in honestly reflecting their headspace, that Parasites & Butterflies lives up to its name; an at-turns chaotic, beautiful, emotive sprawl that immerses itself in light and shade, strength and vulnerability, hope and ruin.

“The album is the bridge between those two contrasting sides of life,” Love begins. “Supernova was an album about empowerment and celebrating people as superheroes in the face of the pandemic and what felt like the end of the world. It was larger than life, colourful, joyous. Some of that is still present on Parasites & Butterflies, but we also needed to show a more human side, too. To celebrate vulnerability and an openness and honesty about the sad sides of life.”