Lifelong companions Rosa Walton and Jenny Hollingworth channel their instinctive creative rapport into the innovative pop of Let's Eat Grandma. Their 2016 debut I, Gemini incorporated material composed during early adolescence and absorbed equal influence from mainstream chart successes, Grimm's fairy tales, Björk, and Kate Bush. More refined yet equally spirited, the luminous synth pop of 2018's I'm All Ears arose from sessions with cutting-edge producer SOPHIE, while the sincere compositions on 2022's Two Ribbons captured the upheavals and bereavements that altered yet sustained Hollingworth and Walton's bond. In comparable fashion, the duo's contributions to the score for Netflix series Half Bad: The Bastard Son & the Devil Himself conveyed further artistic maturation through an unsettling merger of electronic and acoustic instrumentation.
Raised in Norwich, U.K., Hollingworth and Walton formed an inseparable friendship at age four during a kindergarten art session. Their subsequent joint ventures encompassed constructing tree houses, filming short movies, and ultimately creating music. The pair's initial song emerged at age ten; by thirteen they were composing inside a rehearsal space located in Walton's residence. Adopting their moniker from a quip in the punctuation guide Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Let's Eat Grandma began tracking album material at the local music college when both were fourteen and commenced live performances shortly afterward. Manchester singer/songwriter Kiran Leonard noticed their name on a 2014 Norwich Sound & Vision Festival poster, prompting shared management and a contract with Transgressive Records, which issued the early-2016 singles "Deep Six Textbook," "Eat Shiitake Mushrooms," and "Rapunzel." Credited to the duo on every instrument, I, Gemini appeared that June and collected songs written years earlier; the album earned praise for its inventive lyrics and fanciful arrangements before reaching number 149 on the U.K. charts.
Following studies at Access Norwich, a music-focused creative facility, Hollingworth and Walton delivered June 2018's I'm All Ears, a dynamic fusion of synth pop and prog rock shaped by SOPHIE, the Horrors' Faris Badwan, and David Wrench. The set surpassed I, Gemini commercially, attaining number 28 in the U.K. while securing an Ivor Novello nomination and Album of the Year at the Q Awards. Recognition coincided with strain on the pair's once-intuitive link. After musician Billy Clayton, Hollingworth's boyfriend, succumbed in 2019 to a rare bone cancer, Let's Eat Grandma withdrew all U.S. dates except Coachella. Grieving further losses, including SOPHIE's 2021 death, Hollingworth and Walton restored their relationship through deliberate separation and independent songwriting. Walton supplied the track "I Really Want to Stay at Your House" to Cyberpunk 2077 in late 2020.
Reuniting with Wrench, the duo released April 2022's Two Ribbons, which assigned composition duties separately to Walton and Hollingworth and merged synth pop with confessional acoustic ballads. The album climbed to number four on the U.K. Independent Albums chart and number 26 on the U.K. Albums chart. Later that year they issued the single "Give Me a Reason," previously exclusive to the deluxe vinyl edition of Two Ribbons, ahead of a U.K. tour. October 2022 brought the release of Let's Eat Grandma's atmospheric, electro-acoustic score for Half Bad: The Bastard Son & the Devil Himself. Series writer Joe Barton and director Colm McCarthy referenced tracks from the duo's debut while adapting Sally Green's novels about rival witch factions living among humans. The soundtrack appeared on vinyl and CD in June 2023.
