Strawhouses, who have just released their new album, Time in the Light:

After 15 years in the making, British band Strawhouses have unveiled Time in the Light (via Now Listen) – a powerful, ambitious second album that transforms a collection of long-held songs into their fullest and most expansive form.

Self-produced and entirely self-funded, Time in the Light is a record driven by a love of songwriting and recording rather than nostalgia or commercial calculation. Built around elevating original demos into fully realised recordings, the album combines raw band performances with cinematic arrangements, featuring string quartets, trumpet, layered guitars, piano and synth. The result is a record that sounds both intimate and vast, despite being recorded largely in small DIY spaces.

Mixed by Grammy Award-winning engineer Guy Massey, Time in the Light captures a band embracing the creative freedom that comes with making music purely for its own sake. Across 10 tracks, Strawhouses explore themes of time, mortality, memory and meaning, creating an album that is reflective, moving and ultimately life-affirming.

Opening track “Fireworks” places listeners in the trenches of the First World War, drawing inspiration from the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. The title track serves as a reminder to appreciate everyday moments before they disappear, while “My Saving Grace” delivers a deeply personal final love letter written from a deathbed. Album closer “The Last Day” follows a protagonist calmly walking through the streets at the end of the world, providing a quietly devastating conclusion.

Even when focused on personal relationships, the album’s central themes remain ever-present. Lead single and focus track “No Other Way Round” tells the story of a relationship that was undone not by a lack of love, but by timing. Originally written in 2009, the song evolved from a delicate acoustic piece into one of the album’s most immediate and uplifting moments.

Reflecting on the track, songwriter Paul Straws explains: “It's about a relationship where everything was right except the timing. She was an aspiring TV writer; I was trying to make it big in music. We had to kill the relationship to keep chasing our dreams.

“The song is a fork-in-the-road moment: chasing the thing that defines your life and sacrificing something else in exchange. It fits the album's themes because it's still about making the most of your life – it's just that this one captures a single short story rather than ‘the bigger picture’.”

Musically, Time in the Light marks a significant progression from Strawhouses’ 2010 debut album These Are The Willing. From the dreamy atmospherics of “Flickers” to the meaty drum loops of “Circling the Drain” – where the arrangement barely draws breath – the record constantly shifts shape while maintaining a strong emotional core. It is an album that confronts the passing of time head-on, finding both beauty and defiance in life's impermanence.

Rather than a traditional comeback, Time in the Light feels like something more meaningful: a band rediscovering the reasons they started making music in the first place. Time in the Light is available to buy/stream now on all platforms.

Time in the Light tracklist:

1. Fireworks

2. Back When You Cared

3. Time in the Light

4. Flickers

5. No Other Way Round

6. Warships

7. Circling the Drain

8. My Saving Grace

9. Shards

10. The Last Day