The Staves’ All Now, produced by John Congleton, marks the band’s debut album as the duo of Jessica and Camilla Staveley-Taylor, following their sister Emily’s departure. “There was a delayed reaction to trauma and these big changes out of your control,” Jess says of the period after the February 2021 release of their album Good Woman, as the band—like everyone—was forced to sit with their thoughts. Struggling after two years of deep solitude and pain, The Staves did what they know how to do best: they got back to writing with the idea of going back to basics and focusing almost solely on each other and their guitars as a starting point.
The Staves’ new album All Now, produced by John Congleton (Sharon Van Etten, Angel Olsen), is available March 22, 2024, on Nonesuch Records in the US. The album track “You Held It All” was released earlier this fall, marking the band’s debut recording as the duo of Jessica and Camilla Staveley-Taylor following their sister Emily’s departure. All Now’s title track is available now, along with the video below directed by James Arden and inspired by the influential British music television program Old Grey Whistle Test. A US tour, the band’s first since 2017, will be announced soon.
Jessica and Camilla said of the title track:
“It’s a stream of consciousness about frustration and feeling overwhelmed with modernity. Kind of a rejection of the performative way we have to express ourselves now in order for it to be deemed valid.
“We were in love with the old footage of singer songwriters performing in shows like the Old Grey Whistle Test, and the way the audience hung on the singer’s every word.
"We wanted to play with the idea of ‘All Now’ being an ideology and a message. Something that came from artists and creatives, but is then hijacked and commodified by corporate creeps, preaching the message to gain power.”
All Now emerges from a period of chaos for the band that was followed by a period of enforced quiet. The Staves released their third album, Good Woman, in February 2021; it was an album of love and loss, written during a disconcerting period of turmoil and pain. “There was a delayed reaction to trauma and these big changes out of your control,” says Jess of the period that came after Good Woman, as the band—like the rest of us—were forced to sit with their thoughts.
The Staveley-Taylors were also still processing the death of their mother and other seismic changes: Emily took a backseat on this album (while still contributing vocals on a handful of tracks) to focus on motherhood, while Camilla reckoned with her own mental and physical health issues, including chronic pain and a series of operations due to endometriosis, which began to take an increasing toll.
Struggling after two years of deep solitude and pain following the release of Good Woman, The Staves did what they know how to do best: they got back to writing with the idea of going back to basics and focusing almost solely on each other and their guitars as a starting point.
It began with Jess, navigating this new landscape by harnessing her creativity on her own, at first in the studio in Hackney at the end of 2022, then slowly luring Camilla back to the next chapter of The Staves, before reaching out to Congleton, who the band had worked with on Good Woman.
