On the Rise
Silver Gore

Initially formed in 2022, the musical alchemy between Gore and Flynn existed long before the first sparks of their new band began to fly. Yorkshire-born Flynn is an established solo indie artist with two albums under his belt - Abandon All Hope (2023) and B-Sides & Rarities: Volume 1 (2020). Gore is a newcomer to songwriting, but she has been playing drums since infancy and as part of Flynn’s current live band. Their pair’s development from bandmates, into romantic partners, into Silver Gore has been steady and intuitive. It was at the tail end of a rehearsal at Flynn’s flat in London a few years ago that they improvised and jammed out their first song together as a duo.

“It’s funny making music that you would actually listen to yourself,” smiles Gore. The pair are currently staying in Flynn’s family home in Yorkshire, where they recorded the “proper version” of “All The Good Men”, the first track they ever wrote together. It’s a punchy two minutes of kaleidoscopic synths and twitchy beats. “That was the moment where we were like ‘okay, we’re doing this’,” recalls Flynn about this turning point in Silver Gore’s story. He took the pre-existing recordings from the duo’s first London jam session and began incorporating them into new ones.

“It’s funny when music becomes work,” she offers. “It’s a long story. I won’t go into it, but I wasn’t listening to anyone’s music. It was really weird.” What sounds like an intense period of burnout thankfully passed and Gore’s excitement for new music - especially Silver Gore’s’ - has returned. She addresses her experience of musical anhedonia on the song “A Scar’s Length” which despite its sad context, is an uplifting ode to moving on; full of buoyant synths and snappy beats, all guided by Gore’s bittersweet vocal and clear lyrical intonation. “I just really would listen to these songs,” she gushes when speaking about the music they’ve recorded so far. “I feel proud that when I put them on, I want to dance and move to them.”

Once the pair decided they were moving forward with Silver Gore, there was no hesitation. “It’s crazy that it’s happened in one year,” Gore reflects. “So much has gone on. We’ve basically nearly finished our album now as well.” For Gore, the joy she derives from creating her own music is something that she couldn’t have imagined just a short time ago. As an avid fan of new music, whilst she was touring alongside Flynn for his solo shows, the drummer was shocked to find herself in a prolonged phase of being unable to listen to any music at all.

Integrating the binary opposites of up and down and blending contrasting sounds and tempos is a skill that both musicians seem to naturally possess. “Everything I’ve done has kind of been labelled as ‘genre-bending’,” offers Flynn. “I think you can tell that we’ve got a ‘thing’ that we’re doing, [but] it’s not completely random. We didn’t labour over the songs for months and months. We just kind of did it there and then.”

The pair take a moment to credit the mixing work of Ben Baptie (Self Esteem, Little Simz) who has helped shape their dynamic sounds into something cohesive. “I like things to be in that space between clean and lo-fi,” Flynn says. “[It was] Ben who really brought that out. He nailed the brief there.” He pauses briefly to acknowledge how “nerdy” that sounds, to which Gore quickly replies "Yeah, that’s Waver vibes.”

She’s referring to a childhood memory Flynn revealed earlier during our chat, something he said he had not shared with her before: an early recollection of feeling discontent as a four-year-old when he was assigned the “cowardly” character of Waver in the music-note-themed “play” at his nursery.

Flynn was desperate to be cast as the brave character Quaver instead. “I really didn’t want to be the cowardly one, so I was crying,” offers Flynn, acknowledging the irony of his reaction. “It was just pretending, but I didn’t understand pretending [at the time]” He smiles, admitting that as an adult, he would willingly opt to play the emotionally complex Waver character instead.

“Quaver was actually my nickname that my brothers called me. Ava Quaver,” Gore reveals, before extending her sympathies to Flynn to soothe his mildly scarring recollection. She offers her own distressing childhood memory to balance things out: “I cried when I was Mary in the nursery nativity.” The drummer shares that her performance anxiety was due to the “mortifying” idea that everyone thought the boy cast as Joseph was her real-life boyfriend. Flynn playfully chimes in with “I guess Mary and Joseph are the most famous historical boyfriend and girlfriend [and] now when you’re on stage, the guy you’re with is actually your boyfriend.” Without missing a beat, Gore comically interjects with “Yeah, and now I’m crying on the inside.”

In all seriousness, overcoming her performance anxieties is something Gore has been working hard on since infancy. Despite attending “hippy” singing camps and being a classically trained singer, she describes her earliest attempts at singing in public as “terrifying” and punctuated by lots of tears. She thinks the catalyst for her change in confidence was having someone really believe in her, before citing Flynn as one of those key supporting forces. “I think what we’re doing [as Silver Gore] is really good,” she smiles. “Whenever I sing [our] songs the fear just goes away, because I get too carried away now to get nervous. I feel just so in it.”

For Silver Gore, writing music that they enjoy is paramount, and Gore’s new emotional resilience has afforded the duo this privilege. As a final comment on the music, the drummer offers that when she listens to the tracks in public, she can’t resist miming and gesticulating along to them. “They’re not just songs to me,” she beams, “they’re moments and feelings. I know that’s really cringey and boring, but I really feel that. Now I’m actually doing it [and writing my own songs] I’m like: ‘I know what everyone was talking about!’”