Grim Town. It’s unclear exactly what or where it is, but picture somewhere grey, flat and small in both size and significance. It’s a concrete slab on a cul-de-sac that leads to nowhere. It’s a restlessness that rocks back and forth, back and forth. It’s the suffering that starts in the corner of your mind and ends with total loss of identity and control. It’s the grim realisation that you are not who you thought you were, and that the only way you can face your most excruciating fears is through an unforgiving, unadulterated pop song. Or as the intro to SOAK’s extraordinary second album of the same name puts it – ‘you are now entering the southbound train to Grim Town. Please surrender any faith, passportation or optimism to platform staff if you haven’t already. Refreshments will not be available on this service. Thank you and enjoy your journey.’

“I was so sure of myself when I was sixteen, so sure of what I was about, and I didn’t give a fuck,” Bridie Monds-Watson says now. “But when I finished touring I realised that I had no idea who I was outside of music. I don’t think I’d been mentally assessing how I felt for a while, and needed to find a way of looking after myself tha

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