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The profile · researched 26 October 2026
Elder Island Undid Their Own Production — and Took the Jam Room on Tour
The Bristol trio spent two albums layering detail into the studio, then threw the method out for a third record built from live jams. Hello Baby Okay arrived on 8 May 2026, and the tour behind it is in the middle of its British leg right now.
Bristol, 2014, and a name borrowed from Canada
Elder Island formed in Bristol in 2014, and not as a dance act. Katy Sargent (vocals, cello), Luke Thornton (bass and programming) and David Havard (guitar and keyboards) first worked together under the name Trouvaille, described at the time as an experimental audiovisual project and rooted in folk. The trio renamed themselves after a Canadian island, and over the following years the folk receded while house and indie electronica took its place.
A self-titled EP earned airplay on BBC Radio 6 Music, which is roughly where the band stopped being a side project and started being a career. Even so, the three kept work outside music running alongside it for a long stretch. The catalogue built up slowly and sideways: three EPs, two remix albums, and a run of singles stretching from 2014 to 2025, the last of those being 'Ordinary Love'.
Sargent's cello stayed in the line-up throughout, which is part of why the records have never sat flush with the rest of Bristol's electronic output. The low end is programmed, the top line is sung, and in between there is an acoustic string instrument doing work that a synth could have done more cheaply.
Two albums of layering
The debut, The Omnitone Collection, came out on 8 February 2019, ten tracks of electronics, bouncy rhythms and soul vocals aimed at being introspective and danceable at once. It took the band to North America that year on their first full tour behind an album.
Swimming Static followed in May 2021, a second record of ten tracks that moved between electronica and indie storytelling with neo-soul in the middle of it. It was received well. It was also, by the band's own later account, the problem. Swimming Static was studio-facing and meticulously layered, assembled through detail-driven production that the three agonised over, and the consequence showed up when they tried to play it: the arrangements were difficult to recreate on a stage.
That is an unglamorous reason to change direction, and it is the reason the trio give. A record that cannot be performed has a short second life.
Hello Baby Okay: the reset
Hello Baby Okay, the third studio album, was released on 8 May 2026 through !K7. It is the first album the trio made in a new studio, having moved into a larger, airier space that the band credit with producing a more colourful and more playful sound.
The method changed more than the room did. Instead of overdubbing takes until a track was dense, the three let songs emerge from free-flowing jams and then worked on playing them through live to refine structure and sound. Sargent has described the governing mantra as 'keep it simple' — K.I.S.S., as the band put it in interviews — and the effect on her writing was to let emotional meaning sit on the surface rather than being obscured under layered themes. The reference points are 1990s house and club culture, and the songwriting is more direct, with choruses built to be sung back. 'We wanted the joy to shine through' is how the trio summarised it. The subject matter is mature love, commitment and hope held against a difficult backdrop, with each of the ten tracks given its own space inside what the band call a cinematic universe.
The tracklist runs 'Ordinary Love', 'Pink Lemon', 'Bang', 'White Corridor', 'Snapshot', 'Faster Faster', 'Broken Melody', 'Letters', 'Bigger Than Us' and 'The Inner Light'. 'Pink Lemon' announced the album in February 2026, released with a video by Anton Larkin that turns housework into a glowing laundrette, shot with Martin Parr interiors and Wes Anderson framing in mind. 'Snapshot', which arrived in March, is the first outright love song the band have written and was among the last written for the record; the video came from the Bristol photographic lab Photographique and plays out inside the pages of a photo album. 'Letters' was built on a chugging rock drum loop with a Rhodes figure and guitar layered over it, and the band describe it as a road-trip song with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas somewhere behind the imagery. Elton John picked 'Letters' for his Apple Music programme Rocket Hour.
Where they stand, October 2026
The album cycle began with two small preview shows — Strange Brew in Bristol on 25 March 2026 and Oslo in London on 26 March — both of which sold out and both of which gave audiences their first hearing of the new material.
The touring then went wide. A North American leg ran through late September and early October: Neumos in Seattle on 20 September, Wonder Ballroom in Portland on 22 September, the Bluebird Theater in Denver on 29 September, Lee's Palace in Toronto on 3 October and Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn on 8 October. Glassio opened.
The British and Irish headline run opened at The Globe in Cardiff on 21 October 2026 and played the Button Factory in Dublin on 23 October, again with Glassio supporting. What remains at the time of writing is Room 2 in Glasgow on 28 October, Belgrave Music Hall in Leeds on 30 October, Band on the Wall in Manchester on 31 October, CHALK in Brighton on 4 November, KOKO in London on 5 November and The Prospect Building in Bristol on 6 November, before two European dates: Melkweg OZ in Amsterdam on 17 November and Üebel & Gefährlich in Hamburg on 18 November. The London date is comfortably the most-tracked of the run on Songkick, where around 86,800 users follow the band and London is their most-played city with eighteen shows logged historically.
The show itself
The Hello Baby Okay set has settled into a fixed shape. Seattle, Portland and Toronto all ran the same twelve songs, and the Toronto performance on 3 October 2026 was logged from 10pm to 11.20pm — eighty minutes, no encore recorded.
The running order opens on 'Letters' and closes on 'Ordinary Love', with 'Pink Lemon', 'Snapshot' and 'The Inner Light' carrying the new album and the rest drawn from the back catalogue: 'Kape Fear', 'bamboo', 'Bonfires', 'Black Fur', 'welcome state', 'The Big Unknown' and 'Purely Educational'. 'Kape Fear' remains the band's most frequently performed song across the 67 shows users have logged.
Fan accounts converge on the same thing, which is that the recordings undersell the band. Reviewers on Songkick describe performances that rework the songs rather than reproducing them, extending tracks into something closer to a dance remix, and single out the way the three stack sounds live for depth. One attendee's verdict was that their talent is best appreciated at live performances. The dissent in the same pile of reviews is worth noting too: at least one show was cut to around 45 minutes with Sargent audibly unwell, so the eighty-minute figure is the intended length rather than a guarantee.
The show, now
A 2026 Elder Island headline show runs about eighty minutes and twelve songs, with no encore logged on the current tour: the Toronto date on 3 October 2026 played 10pm to 11.20pm, and the Seattle and Portland sets used the identical running order. It opens on 'Letters' and ends on 'Ordinary Love', with 'Pink Lemon', 'Snapshot' and 'The Inner Light' representing the new album and older material — 'Kape Fear', 'bamboo', 'Bonfires', 'Black Fur', 'welcome state', 'The Big Unknown', 'Purely Educational' — filling the middle. 'Kape Fear' is the band's most-played song across logged shows. Glassio is the support act across both the North American and UK/Irish legs. The record was deliberately written to be playable, after Swimming Static proved hard to reproduce on stage, and fan reviews consistently report that the trio rework songs live rather than replicate them, stretching them towards dance remixes and layering instruments against the programmed parts. The one recurring complaint in those reviews concerns a short, 45-minute show played when Sargent was ill.
Researched from en.wikipedia.org · elderisland.bandcamp.com · 10magazine.com · femmusic.com · femmusic.com · songkick.com · setlist.fm · singularartists.ie
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