“Have you ever had sleep paralysis?” asks Little Barrie’s band leader Barrie Cadogan, discussing the title track of the trio’s latest offering. “That’s what Gravity Freeze is written about. It’s like a nickname I gave to that moment where you’ve woken up and you’re still dreaming. The first time that happened to me, I freaked because I couldn’t move, but I couldn’t tell if I was awake or not. It’s a very strange feeling, and you do weird things, like trying to walk through wardrobes. There are a few elements on the album that reflect what we’ve been through in the last few years. We’ve been through a lot, some of which we’re still processing.”
Little Barrie, having spent over two decades establishing themselves as the UK’s prime purveyors of psychedelic rock’n’soul, return with their sixth studio album, Gravity Freeze. It is the band’s first release solely under their own name since the passing of drummer Virgil Howe who, 10 years after joining the band, succumbed to a heart attack in September 2017. Howe’s sudden death devastated Cadogan and fellow founder member/bass player Lewis Wharton, placing Little Barrie’s future in question. “It was really difficult at first because you feel guilty for making music without your mate. We had this unique thing, the three of us, so we didn’t know whether we could still do anything. Virgil will always be part of this band because when he joined he brought a sense of stability to what we were doing. He also made us more self-sufficient with his production and engineering skills,” says Cadogan, reflecting on the decision to keep the band going. “We realize that the band can never be the same without him, but it doesn’t mean we can’t do something good. It can just be different.”
After Covid-19 derailed Little Barrie’s initial attempts to play again in 2019, Barrie and Lewis decided to collaborate with long-time friend Malcolm Catto (drummer, producer and co-founder of The Heliocentrics). The partnership proved to be fruitful, yielding two albums under the joint banner of ‘Little Barrie & Malcolm Catto’–Quatermass Seven and Electric War–the latter released on Dan Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound in April 2025. “Playing together felt therapeutic,” admits Cadogan. “We’d known Malcolm for a long time, we hadn’t seen him for years but working with him felt great. In the end, we ended up working on the new Little Barrie album in tandem with the music that we were making for Electric War. The Little Barrie material definitely picked up where we left off on the last album but there’s also new elements to what we’re doing.”
True to the DIY process that the band had developed with Howe, the woodshedding process for Gravity Freeze began by demoing material in a cold rehearsal room in Dalston surrounded by partial drum kits, art equipment, and random bits of wood and metal, before formal recording sessions began. The band convened at Rat Salad Studios in Hornsey, North London, to record in the company of Rupert Lyddon (co-founder of ‘80s-inspired outfit Grand National), who had already provided what Cadogan refers to as “endless technical support” on their 2017 album, Death Express, and become an invaluable sounding board during that time and beyond. “I’d been working with Rupert on some instrumental library projects, and I was getting really good guitar sounds with him so it was obvious that he should be the guy to record, engineer and co-produce the new album,” explains Cadogan–whose library and soundtrack work is possibly most famously illustrated by Little Barrie’s creation of the theme tune to Vince Gilligan’s hit drama, Better Call Saul. Equally significant was his contribution to the 2022 BBC2 documentary Year Of The Dog, which profiled the work of dog charity ‘Dogs On The Streets’ and for which he composed the music, aided and abetted by Lyddon as well as drummer Tony Coote.
A man who cut his teeth playing along to records by James Brown and The Stone Roses in equal measure, Coote had known Cadogan for a number of years. Welcoming him into Little Barrie ahead of Gravity Freeze was both a logical and inspirational next step. “Tony and I had done sessions together, so we knew each other pretty well. Once we got into making the album, his work was done in a matter of weeks,” says Cadogan. “The cool thing about Tony’s drumming is that he’s always had that tasteful feeling. A lot of my favourite rock bands have drummers who learnt from jazz. They swing alongside that kind of fuzz element and those old school sounds that make the music feel good to us. Tony has that nice touch, too.”
Work on Gravity Freeze began in late 2023, but Cadogan’s reputation as an in-demand guitar player for hire interrupted proceedings on more than one occasion. Stints as a member of Liam Gallagher’s band and Gallagher & John Squire’s tour in early 2024 as well as The Black Keys followed, while studio work involved a number of trips to Easy Eye Sound Studios in Nashville at Auerbach’s request to play on albums by Jeremie Albino, Robert Finley, and Miles Kane. Barrie also found time to maintain his longstanding relationship with Matt Johnson’s alternative rock mavericks The The, co-writing two songs and appearing on 11 out of the 12 tracks that make up the band’s 2024 album, Ensoulment, and then playing the subsequent live shows. “I’ve learnt a lot from Matt. Everything that I’ve been doing has also fed into where I am now as a player,” Cadogan acknowledges of his impressive CV, which also includes touring and recording with the likes of Paul Weller, Johnny Marr, and Primal Scream. Certainly, Gravity Freeze feels textured, concise, and infectious. Its less-is-more approach is defined by the brooding opener “More Bad Miles Of Road”–a track whose very title appears to echo the work of ‘50s guitar pioneer Duane Eddy, its sonic depth serving as a reminder of Little Barrie’s irresistible soulful qualities.
Gravity Freeze is an album which is designed for maximum impact. Even the running order is deliberate, created as it was with vinyl in mind. “More Bad Miles Of Road” tumbles into the dappled psychedelia of the fuzz-heavy “It Isn’t Soul” before moving to two tunes that form the reflective, emotional heart of the album: the wistful, Shuggie Otis-styled “December” and the seven-minute-plus Brit-psych choogle of “Luggin’ Hurt” (both tracks enhanced by the talents of Holly Quin-Ankrah and Frida Touray on backing vocals).
Side Two of the album opens with the smouldering, stomp-and-start of “Talk It Up Like It’s Wanted,” a tune that showcases Cadogan’s own take on his eternal blues influences, as does the slow shuffle of “Anything You Are.” The driving brace of “Coralisa” and “Wire,” meanwhile, confirms the band’s decision to try to capture genuine in-the-room performances on this album, as well as revealing a renewed post-Can percussive impetus. “Rhythm’s always been a big inspiration for me. I’ve been inspired so much by drummers as I have guitar players,” reflects Cadogan. “‘Wire’ has just got a steady groove which Tony kept going because it started out as a messy kind of loop originally. I wanted it to be hypnotic, almost like a dance tune, but with this really swampy guitar. I just wanted it to simmer.”
And simmer it does. Gravity Freeze concludes with the loose-limbed title track, bringing to a close what is undoubtedly the most satisfying Little Barrie offering to date. The album also marks twenty years since the release of the band’s debut album, the Edwyn Collins-produced We Are Little Barrie, and underlines just how far they’ve come. “When we started, we couldn’t find singers so I ended up singing. We wanted to sound like a funky Chuck Berry and The Meters with a bit of the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Traffic thrown in, but I guess we’ve evolved since then. I’ve certainly evolved as a guitar player,” concludes Cadogan, a man who has quietly become one of the finest guitarists of his generation. “I think I’ve become a bit more original, but it took me a long time. I don’t think I’ve fully cracked it yet because it’s a constant work in progress but when people start saying that you sound unique, that’s when you start to notice that maybe things have changed.”
Nine years on from their last album, things have indeed changed for Little Barrie and with Gravity Freeze they are ready to go again. How grateful we are to have them back…
