Man/ woman/ chainsaw talk debut album 'cannonball', GROWTH AND the value of comparison

Words: Char Bartle

Nearly a month has passed since Man/Woman/Chainsaw's much-awaited debut 'Cannonball' dropped. The debut record has now left the private sphere of a six-piece who spent years writing, rewriting and recording it, and has entered the far less controllable world of public opinion- a transition Billy Doyle and Clio Starwood are relishing. “It’s really cool and exciting to watch people’s interpretations and see people’s favourites,” Starwood tells Dizzy when we met with the pair to talk about the album. 

For years, Cannonball existed only as something Man/Woman/Chainsaw were making. Now it belongs, at least partially, to everybody else. The band’s run of intimate in-store performances has made that transition especially tangible. Starwood describes them as “up close and personal.” Then came the headline show at London’s George Tavern, a sold-out celebration held the day before the album itself arrived. For those who were there, it was an appropriately intense introduction to the record’s new life. 

The following morning, Cannonball entered the public domain. Perhaps the most interesting thing about its arrival, though, is that it isn’t quite the record some people expected Man/Woman/Chainsaw to make. The six-piece formed in London in 2019, with Billy Ward and bassist Vera Leppänen having first started making music together at just 14. After years of changing line-ups, the group settled into their current formation in 2023, emerging from the fertile South London scene around The Windmill and quickly developing a reputation for music that could be abrasive, unpredictable and gloriously noisy. 

By early 2025 they had been named one of NME’s 100 Essential Emerging Artists. Singles including ‘Adam & Steve’, ‘Only Girl’ and eventually ‘Nosedive’ began to broaden the picture. When Cannonball finally arrived on August 7, 2026, the result was considerably more melodic than some early descriptions of the band might have suggested. But Man/Woman/Chainsaw don’t see it as a reinvention. “I’ve been in this band since I was 16 and I’m now 21,” says Starwood. “Those are extremely formative years anyway. It would be strange if we didn’t evolve.” That evolution, importantly, wasn’t the result of a conscious decision to move away from noise and towards pop. Rather, Cannonball sounds like the band gradually discovering what they were capable of. “We’ve always had an interest in making a lot of noise,” Starwood explains. But the album makes clear that this was never the only thing they were interested in. Billy points towards Leppänen in particular. “Vera’s always been an incredible pop writer,” he says, describing how much he has learned from her approach to songwriting. It is one of the keys to Cannonball. The album is undeniably adventurous, but its experimentation rarely feels like an end in itself. The songs are allowed to be songs. That idea is something Doyle emphasised, stating that “no one in music has a totally new idea,” suggesting, perhaps, that the relentless pursuit of total originality can actually stunt artistry rather than feed it.

 On Cannonball, that distinction is crucial. The old Man/Woman/Chainsaw haven’t disappeared. Listen to the outro of ‘Canyons’ and the noise is still there, waiting to erupt in a live setting. But elsewhere, the band allow themselves to be startlingly direct. ‘Nosedive’, one of the album’s final songs to be completed, was an obvious breakthrough. Billy talks of the band “knowing it was a knockout” as soon as they finished writing it. It certainly sounds that way. The first time I heard it, it came on autoplay while I was walking around Liverpool Sound City. I had to sit down in the Jacaranda and immediately watch the video. Since then, it has become the kind of song that demands repeated listening- the sort of single that doesn’t merely introduce an album, but pulls you towards it. And if you loved ‘Nosedive’, there is a good chance Cannonball has plenty more waiting for you. ‘Only Girl’, ‘Snakebite’, ‘Canyons’, ‘Something Else To Give’ and ‘Still Angry’ each reveal a different side of the band.  ‘Snakebite’ is perhaps the most immediately addictive: under two minutes of melancholy build-up, yearning vocals and an abrupt ending that arrives just as you wish the song would give you more. The brevity only makes you press play again. 

For all the attention paid to Man/Woman/Chainsaw’s sound, however, there is another quality running through Cannonball that deserves equal attention: their lyrics. ‘Something Else To Give’ is a particularly striking example. “Coughing on your promises / You took me for a ride / Say love, do you?” is devastating precisely because it is so simple. The song becomes a portrait of a one-sided relationship, the speaker stuck in the uncomfortable space between knowing something is over and still wishing they had more to offer. Then there is ‘Still Angry’, arguably the album’s most poetic and heartbreaking moment. “Rolled in my pashmina / There’s guilt left in the seams / No matter how I scrub it / It makes me 17.” It is a remarkably effective image: an ordinary object becoming permanently attached to a memory, carrying emotional residue that cannot simply be washed away. It would be easy to dismiss ‘Still Angry’ as another post-break-up song, but the writing gives it considerably more depth. 

The ability to hold apparently opposing ideas together is perhaps what makes Cannonball so exciting. The band have found themselves described as post-punk, art-rock and open-hearted pop. Those descriptions don’t necessarily contradict one another, but neither quite manages to contain the record. That seems obvious once you hear Cannonball. The album doesn’t present melody as a compromise or experimentation as something that needs to be sacrificed for accessibility. Instead, the two exist seamlessly alongside each other.

 It is also why some of the band’s most frequently repeated comparisons can feel slightly limiting. Emerging from The Windmill scene, Man/Woman/Chainsaw have inevitably found themselves compared to other bands from the same orbit. Black Country, New Road is an especially persistent reference point. For a band with a violinist, an experimental streak and a South London postcode, the comparison can sometimes arrive before the music itself. 

Doyle and Starwood aren’t dismissive of comparison altogether. There is value in recognising influences, and no artist creates in a vacuum. But there is a difference between using comparison as a way into unfamiliar music and allowing it to become a substitute for listening. Billy recalls being explicitly asked “How does it feel to BE Black Country, New Road?” At this point the pair field expressions that warn any interviewer against asking them something so ridiculous again (fair enough, guys.)

 Doyle himself is conscious of the instinctive comparisons that surround the six-piece constantly. Even our own conversation proves it: when the subject of Cannonball’s production comes up, the obvious question is about Seth Evans, the co-producer behind the record alongside Margo Broom and former session guitarist of experimental rock band Black Midi. Billy doesn’t deny that he was once very much a “Black Midi kid”, and the group had already worked with Evans and Broom on the band’s previous EP. By the time they began working towards Cannonball, they knew the duo were the people they wanted. Doyle recalls initially finding it overwhelming to be around Evans, only for him to become “just Seth” far sooner than expected. It is Broom’s role, meanwhile, that the band are particularly keen to underline. Her “insightfulness” clearly became a major part of steering the record, with the production partnership between the two helping Man/Woman/Chainsaw turn their increasingly expansive ideas into a coherent album. 

That coherence extends to the world surrounding Cannonball. The album’s visual identity feels incredibly considered for a debut. The cover concept was developed during a long car journey with the whole band, eventually becoming a cluttered, slightly messy room designed to look like it could genuinely exist in someone’s house. Objects and trinkets scattered throughout the space act as little Easter eggs for songs on the record. Then they decided to build a music video in the same room. The result is a visual world that feels connected to the music without explaining it. Rather than treating the visuals as promotional material that sits beside the album, Man/Woman/Chainsaw have made them feel like another integral part of Cannonball. It is a particularly impressive feat for a debut from a band who could easily have fallen into the endless content cycle demanded of young artists now. They have instead created something cohesive enough to speak for itself. 

Now they’re taking their world on the road. The band’s upcoming shows will feature support from Uncle Junior, Cabl and Bathing Suits- bands they are particularly excited about, with Doyle and Starwood keen to point towards new material from Uncle Junior. There is a pleasing symmetry to it. Man/Woman/Chainsaw spent years being the young band people were discovering; now they’re bringing other young bands into rooms with them. 

For all the discussion that has surrounded Cannonball, where it came from, what it sounds like, who it resembles and what happened to the noise, the album ultimately asks a much simpler question. What happens when a Windmill band naturally evolves beyond windmill adjacent noise rock and flourish into a songwriting force? For Man/Woman/Chainsaw, the answer is Cannonball: an album that can be abrasive and tender, strange and immediate, noisy and melodic without treating any of those qualities as mutually exclusive. Perhaps that’s why ‘Nosedive’ felt like such a surprising diversion when it first appeared. Perhaps it wasn’t a diversion at all. Maybe this is simply what Man/Woman/Chainsaw sound like. And if Cannonball

proves anything, it is that the most interesting place for a band to be- especially at this formative stage- is somewhere nobody has quite worked out how to categorise yet.