VIDEO: Watch Billie Marten chat to Phil Hewitt/SussexWorld about her new album

Recorded entirely on tape in Somerset and Wales late last summer, Drop Cherries marks the first time that Billie has both written and co-produced (with Dom Monks) one of her records, following on from the 2021 album Flora Fauna, Feeding Seahorses by Hand (2019) and Writing of Blues and Yellows (2016). The title track was one of the last elements to emerge: the tale of a relationship that simply couldn’t happen for reasons of marriage and religion.

Billie, who is doing in-store appearances at Vinilo, Southampton and also Resident, Brighton both on April 9 (tickets via https://www.billiemarten.com/, explains: “It was a love story I heard from a friend of mine. We just went to the pub one night and the album was nearly finished and I didn't have this song Drop Cherries at the time and he was explaining to me about a kind of a new motif of love that I'd never heard before. And it was this relationship wherein it could never happen. But before the end (the couple) wanted to share grand gestures of love with each other, gestures that weren't kind of stereotypical and one of those things was stamping blood-red cherries onto a cream carpet together. And I just loved that idea of smashing love into someone, and instead of receiving love you're giving it and sharing it. I loved that idea of a ripe cherry. I just thought it was quite apt.” And that was the end of the end of the relationship: “They never saw each other again. It was all to do with marriage and religion. He still thinks of that time really fondly even though it never really happened and I just think that's a good way to look at love.”

Drop Cherries became a metaphor where the gift of cherries stands for offering someone your love; doing anything you can to make them happy. “Dropping cherries is such a strong, visceral image that I tried to channel throughout recording in Somerset and Wales, to capture the vibrancy, unpredictability and occasional chaos one experiences within a relationship. Imagine stamping blood-red cherries onto a clean, cream carpet and tell me that’s not how love feels.” For Billie, it’s all part as well of the progression in her song-writing, leaving aside the anguish of her early songs: “It’s really difficult to write songs from a point of anguish and I think I realised that you can write a reverse sort of idea of the song which involves happiness and contentment and interest in something else that isn't yourself and I just found that really inspiring.” It was also a question of learning to stop thinking about what others want to hear and finally trusting her own instincts: “When I’m trying to write, the creative door is closed most of the time. When it briefly opens, I know I’ve stumbled across moments of true emotion and insight; they give no warning and are often unpredictable. I can’t force the process, something I’m realising more with each album. And that’s why I know that Drop Cherries is a collection of songs expressing genuine intuitive feeling.”