The name of the band, like all of our songs, was already out there, and I found it,” says Clari Freeman-Taylor, frontperson of Mary in the junkyard and the kind of artist-songwriter-mystic that was previously thought lost to algorithm devolution; think Leonard Cohen meets Björk on the south London DIY scene. Wielding a cello, she is sitting in a sweltering café terrace recalling that their band origin story was simply the leap of her imagination: “I was in the car with my previous band and was like, ‘Imagine if there was a band called Mary in the junkyard?’ I thought that would be a much cooler name than our band name.”
Other than drummer David Addison — currently sitting opposite her in the café — the other members were as cold to the name as they were to play any of the songs this strange girl guitarist was presenting. Yet Freeman-Taylor felt she had found a treasure, and as would become important, a visual expression was required: borrowing a letter press from her printmaker sister, she made a poster: “It had a picture of a big hand and said, ‘Mary in the junkyard — sound circus — open your mind and ears.’ I gave one to David, saying this is my new imaginary band, and we made it exist from there.”
