“An album is like a bookmarker of how you felt when you made it”: Nova Twins on the importance of albums and what makes a good one

Since 2018, National Album Day has celebrated the long-player. This year, the organisation has teamed up with a host of artists under the banner of Great British Groups to celebrate the art of the album.

Among them – and it's a list that includes Scottish giants Travis and legendary War Of The Worlds composer Jeff Wayne – this Saturday Nova Twins will be taking part in the fun, when they'll be laying down tracks straight to vinyl.

To find out more, we caught up with Amy Love and Georgia South to find out how they got involved, why albums are important, and the stress of having to make a whole bundle of songs fit together properly…

How did you become ambassadors for National Album Day?
Amy: “We got asked to do it, and we said, ‘Yeah, of course.’ We're a band that definitely champions albums. We listen to albums. We love albums. We make albums. We're not really in the market of just a single here and there. I’m not saying we will never release a single just for the sake of it, but we'll always want to come back to the album.”
Georgia: “We love an album. We’ve always loved the idea of creating a whole body of work and really immersing ourselves in that world. Making albums can be super-stressful, but also can be a great opportunity to really harness all of our emotions in that period of time. It's like a bookmarker of how we felt in 2024 or whenever. So that's really cool.”

What’s important for making a good album?
Amy: “Well, for one it starts with the songs. You have to have good songs on there. Also, every component, from the mix to the master and how we receive it to our ears, is so important. Such a big part of the listening experience, especially for the artists, is how we receive it, sonically. That’s thinking about how things are balanced, how it sounds on certain formats, whether it's your phones, your ear pods, your vinyl player. That's a really big experience for us.
“There’s also things like the vibe of the album. Sometimes you want honesty, and on the other hand, you sometimes just want to dance and you want some make-believe shit as well.”
Georgia: “I think what's great about different albums is you have different albums for different moods. An album is such a body of work, a good one makes you feel the energy of it. And that can be completely different for different albums. If you want to stare out the window and be depressed and day dream, then you listen to that album you know is perfect for that. But if you want to be pumped up ready for a night out, you listen to something else.”

Having made a few yourselves now, does having that sense of it as a body of work add to the workload, that everything has to slot together properly?
Georgia: “There's definitely more pressure making a whole album, because obviously it is a whole body of work. It's like drawing a whole picture. You can't just do a little doodle and it's done. You've got to think about that whole composition and how it all ties together as a whole piece, and really think how everything runs into each other. How do you want the journey of the listener to feel, going through the whole album track by track? How long you do want it to be? How short do you want it to be? How you want to start and end? There's so many more components that go into it than just writing one song. So it's definitely more challenging, for sure.”

For some artists, the album is a less important idea than releasing individual songs or a couple of tracks more regularly. Do you see yourselves as an ‘album band’?
Amy: “Yeah. It's not to say that we wouldn't ever just release a single. I’ve got nothing against that. But I think an album is definitely a landmark. It's a goal, and you feel like you've really achieved something once you get over the hurdle.
“When we first go into writing an album it's always a bit scary, and it's a little bit, ‘Oh God, where do you start?’ It feels like such a big task, but when you accomplish it, and you look back on everything you've done, and all the emotions, the blood, the tears, the sweat, the lows, the highs that go into it, it really is worth it. You're able to give your listener more than just a sound bite. You're able to give them something more. It's a real story, it's a real picture, and it can last for half hour, an hour, or however long you want it to last for. We always want there to be something in there for everyone, because we're all human. We all feel everything. So we try our best to be as honest as we can, and we hope that listeners can get something from it, especially if we haven’t had a record for three years! You can’t just come out with a single after all that time.”

What’s the best bit of making an album?
Georgia: “The end of it! No, I love making albums, but when you're in it, your brain is on so many different things, trying to make sure everything is all just how you want it to be. So at the end, you can actually sit back and listen to it, not listening to the finer details where you’re picking out every individual, snare or, but just listen to it as it is. I think that's the best moment, because you're just listening and it's not your album anymore. ‘Okay, this is made.’ It's in front of you, rather than being immersed in it.”
Amy: “That's definitely the best moment. But we definitely have moments where we’ve written a good song and you just realise: yeah, this is sick. That fuels us to keep going.”

What do you remember about getting the chance to make your first album?
Amy: “It’s always quite a feat making a Nova Twins record, because we're very specific in everything. I think we're better now at communicating and doing things ourselves, so it's easier. But when we were making the first album, we were learning ourselves what we wanted, and we got it there, and we were really proud of it. It felt like our arrival. There’s the photos of us sitting on the orange car, and all the things that we made, all the set designs that we've done, on no budget whatsoever. We’d been a band a long time before that, but we just never put an album together. We were touring and gigging and getting better at our craft, so to do an album was amazing. I remember specifically holding the vinyl, being like, ‘We did it!’”
Georgia: “That was our first time recording in like, a proper studio as well. We were away from home because we weren’t in London, and it felt like, ‘We're actually doing it!’”

Finally, what’s your favourite album?
Georgia: “The most monumental and inspiring album for me was probably Seeing Sounds by N.E.R.D. I listened to that when I was probably 13, and I remember it blew my mind. It was so different and amazing. I didn't even know what it was. It's not rock, it's not hip-hop, it’s not electronic, it's just everything in between, and it just blew my mind.”
Amy: “It doesn’t relate to the band in any way whatsoever, but one that will always stand out is Toni Braxton’s Secrets. I used to sing along to it so much because my mum used to listen to it on repeat, to the point where I’d be like, ‘Mum, please turn it off, it’s driving me crazy.’ It will always be an album that brings me comfort and peace, it takes me back to a time when things were simpler, when things were just easy. And I don't necessarily mean that it blew my mind. It just means that it takes me to a good time and an introduction to singing and things like that.”

For more info on National Album Day, visit their website.

Read this next:

• Beyond Supernova: How Nova Twins are still breaking new ground
• Nova Twins: “We don’t want to follow trends, so we try to push it in a new direction”
  
• In conversation with Nova Twins and Witch Fever: “It doesn’t have to be tokenistic, there’s good acts out there if you just open your eyes!”