FIFTY3FRIDAYS: REBEL JOY BY ROSWELL ROAD – TRACK BY TRACK
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I have the Fresh On The Net Inbox once again to thank for introducing me to the music of Roswell Road. The London-based Indie-Americana project of Zoë Wren and Jasmine Watkiss came about after a chance meeting through a mutual friend led to them being pressured to sing together in the very public location of Ely Market Square. The resulting musical chemistry was instantaneous and they have been performing and writing songs together ever since. I am always interested in the genus of a band name; however, conspiracy theorists will not find an Area 51 connection here as the band takes its name from a road called, yes, Roswell Road where the friend who introduced Zoë and Jazz in Ely lived.
Winners of Fatea’s EP of the Year with its very first release, Roswell Road’s beautifully nuanced debut album, Rebel Joy, came out on 13 March. There is no filler to skip; Rebel Joy is one of those records you simply want to play from start to finish. I chose one of the songs as a Fresh On The Net Alt Pick and was delighted when Roswell Road kindly agreed to provide a full track-by-track guide to the new album, so here is what Zoë and Jazz had to say about each song.
All photos by Sophie Barloc
Holy Mountain
Zoë: This is the first song we wrote with our wonderful producers, Dave and Joe Dunwell - they are gorgeous humans and we love collaborating with them. This song was inspired by the crazy-but-true stories I grew up hearing from my parents about their past life spent backpacking around Asia and getting into all kinds of hijinks. The song tells the story of their visit to Mount Kailash in Tibet; they snuck across the border in the back of a truck, hid in a cave and trekked for miles to reach it. They were (and still are) such rebellious spirits and I wanted to write them a love song that would celebrate their past adventures and serve as a reminder that those memories will always be with them.
Weirdo at the Party
Jazz: The more time I spend on the planet, the more I'm comfortable being honest about myself in my songs. I've never felt like I truly fit in anywhere and this has been a deep-seated and unspoken feeling that I've carried with me for most of my life. But it is also very authentic to who I am. I reached a point in my late twenties where I decided I wanted to be more myself in my songwriting, so at some point I decided to start saying the quiet parts out loud. I've often felt out of place in big groups of people. “Weirdo at the Party” is inspired by a party I went to where I felt uncomfortable in my own skin all evening. I kept second-guessing myself and I felt like I didn't know how to talk to anyone all night. I left early and started writing this song the next day. It became a way for me to pick apart and have fun with a moment of discomfort. But it also calls out how trying to be cool can often have exclusionary results. It's a silly, cut-loose kind of bop, but meaningful and resonant to me too.
Island Citizen
Jazz: This is our most recent song, written together on a rainy Sunday afternoon, is a response to the far-right anti-immigration rally that descended on London on Saturday 13 September 2025. We were both pissed off that there is a vocal minority spewing hate towards people who speak a different language, whose skin colour isn't white, who have moved here to try to have a better life and, in the case of asylum seekers, often to escape horrific circumstances. We were inspired by slogans written by the brave anti-fascist counter-protesters in the face of aggression. Zoë and I are both from half-English half-Immigrant families and we wanted to add our voices to the fight in some small way by writing this song.
Out of the Dark
Jazz: I wrote this song about stage fright. I had a years-long period of finding performing very scary; I had been having some minor vocal issues and it ended up spiralling out of control and affecting my mental health. I wrote this song just as I was climbing out of this experience - thanks to two excellent women: my therapist and my singing coach. After not speaking about my anxiety disorder for so long, actively trying to cover it up, I wanted to be honest about how hard it can be to be a performing musician - physically, mentally and financially. And yet, even at my lowest I couldn't give up. It's become really important for me to write songs about my mental health, and if this helps even one person, that means everything to me.
Back Row
Zoë: I wrote this song about how modern productivity culture makes us feel like we have to be busy and efficient 24/7. We can find ourselves constantly on the proverbial treadmill, trying to keep up with the fast pace of life and the pressure to appear outwardly successful. This crazy world can take its toll on mental and physical health, so we all need to allow ourselves to rest when needed. You can't pour from an empty cup. This song is an encouragement to slow down and sit in the 'back row' of life for a while.
Can't Take My Soul
Zoë: We like to call this one our 'Folk the Patriarchy' song. We wrote it together and wanted to laser in on the strength and power of womanhood in our lyrics and music. In the first verse, we wrote about constantly being convinced by capitalism that you aren't good enough, young enough, pretty enough, thin enough and that you need to spend money to fix that. So many commercial industries profit from making us feel bad about ourselves. In the second verse, the narrative shifts to speaking up, finding your voice and rewriting stories to centre the experiences and realities of women. Rebelliousness is the current running throughout the song: 'We won't do what we are told, we don't fit into your mould.”
Let Myself Be Still
Jazz: We wrote this song together with the Dunwells in December 2024 at the end of a long year of touring and working hard on our music. We had almost no ideas when we arrived at their studio that day, but two hours later we came out with this reflective, hopeful song. Imagine us up in Yorkshire in December, freezing cold, with the low winter sun dazzling us as we drove the windy back roads between Leeds and Sheffield. We were feeling both grateful and exhausted on that tour, playing in new cities to new people. On the first night in Leeds, we played to six people; back in Leeds two nights later, we played to 500.
Life on tour is a thing of chance and opportunity. We had stayed up late after one show, eating pasta in our Airbnb and began a tearful heart-to-heart. We talked about our friendship and the things we'd never had the courage to say to each other. It was a really profound moment of openness. The next day, we went to watch Wicked together on the one night off on tour and cried into our milkshakes in the cinema. All this inspired the song. “Let Myself Be Still” is about friendship, gratitude, chance, and the desire to rest. Interestingly, the sound of this song reminds us of music by The Swell Season, Glen Hansard and Marketa Iglova.
Arabella
Jazz: I wrote this love song for my sister who was, at the time, struggling with her mental health. “Arabella” is about sibling love and acceptance and about sitting with the rough and the smooth when a loved one's mental health takes a turn. It took a long time for her to be ready to talk to me about the thoughts inside her head - I just had to wait it out. You can't fix things for the people you love. Sometimes, all you can do is be there to cook them some spag bol, give them a cuddle and put the telly on for them. That's enough.
Bolder
Jazz: I was lucky enough to work for Greenpeace UK a couple of years ago on their Oceans campaign, which was at the time working to stop massive industrial fishing in so-called Marine Protected Areas. It meant I got to go on a Greenpeace boat, the Arctic Sunrise, to go and drop a load of boulders into the English Channel to stop these huge 'supertrawler' ships from decimating the seabed, which has loads of vital habitats and is a carbon 'sink'. I'm not a folksy songwriter usually, but I knew I had to depart from my usual style and write a rousing sea shanty. The lyrics tell the entirely true story of what we did - which I don't think can be said of many sea shanties whose facts are eroded by the passage of time. Who knows, maybe this song will have totally different lyrics in 100 years' time!
Postcards
Zoë: I often like to draw on other people's stories for song inspiration, though in this case I borrowed the drama from, well, a TV show. After binge-watching the series Nashville (about the dramatic lives of country singers and songwriters) I was in a country kinda mood and wrote this song with a friend, Nathan Miller. The imaginary protagonist lives in a small town in Tennessee and all her friends are moving away, while she stays put and ponders a smaller life. It's a whimsical country number that imagines another existence, a world away from my own.
Rebel Joy by Roswell Road is available to stream on all the usual platforms, digitally download or physically own on CD and vinyl via BANDCAMP. You can also catch Roswell Road on tour – check out the latest dates HERE.
