There’s a well-known photo of Yoko Ono from 1967 where the artist is holding a glass hammer. If you live in Los Angeles, you’ve probably seen the image recently in connection with the Music of the Mind exhibition that’s currently at The Broad. English duo Memorials caught sight of that photo when the Yoko Ono retrospective showed at London’s Tate Modern and it ended up inspiring their song, “Cut Glass Hammer,” from the recently-released album All Clouds Bring Not Rain.
“We went to that exhibition and on the posters they have the picture of her with the glass hammer,” Verity Susman recalls on a recent video call. “They don’t have it in the actual exhibition, but that concept really stuck out in our minds.” In fact, Susman says, there was a lot about the Yoko Ono exhibition that seeped into the subconscious as she and Matthew Simms worked on the album- like the artist’s instructions and her references to nature- and may have manifested as subtle influences that they didn’t realize until looking back at photos from the Tate Modern after finishing the album.
The influence isn’t necessarily audible, as Memorials’ sound comes closer to the psychedelia of United States of America and retro-futurism of Broadcast. Still, you might notice it in the nature references that permeate song titles like “I Can’t See a Rainbow,” “Life Could Be a Cloud” and “Reimagined River.” It also might come through in the duo’s commitment to both a concept and experimentation. Susman and Simms were set on using specific instruments that neither of them owned, which prompted a journey through studios and led to “happy accidents” in the studio and, now, in their live performances.
Susman, known for fronting the early ‘00s indie band Electrelane, and Simms, who has played with Wire, launched Memorials after collaborating on film scores together and released their debut album, Memorial Waterslides, two years ago. For their sophomore outing, the duo wrote All Clouds Bring Not Rain before recording and were keen on using certain instruments and gear that they didn’t own, like a harpsichord, a Wurlitzer and a Leslie speaker. “All of those felt important to include on the record, so we wanted some of the parts to be played on those instruments or to run through the Leslie speaker, but we don’t own those things,” says Susman.
First, they headed to 4AD’s studio in London, where they were able to use a harpsichord. “That really made up our mind that we would do that for every instrument that we wanted to get,” Susman recalls. The process helped the duo gather unique sounds that they could use on the album.
“Obviously, any instrument that you record in a particular room is going to sound slightly different to another one and may end up sounding very different and there are happy accidents of that sound add to the character of records,” says Susman. “You hear that in a lot of old records, the idiosyncrasies of a particular instrument, a particular room.”
The experience turned up sounds with which Susman and Simms weren’t all that familiar. “We had never heard the sound of the muted harpsichord and we ended up recording that sound and we ended up using that in certain places more on the production side of things, so it’s not that audible, but we never would have known that that existed unless we went and played around with the instrument itself,” says Susman.
She continues, “We hadn’t really heard it much before, but probably the closest thing is on some Ennio Morricone recordings. And we love all of the stuff that he does and so much of what he does.”
Working in a studio with physical instruments gave them a chance to be creative in a way that’s different from working solely with computers and plug-ins, says Susman. “It’s really good fun and you end up discovering stuff that you didn’t know and sounds that you hadn’t heard before,” she explains. “I think, creatively, it’s much more invigorating than sitting with a computer, although computers have their place.”
The next challenge, though, was translating those sounds into something that Memorials could perform on the road. “It was quite a challenge because there are a lot of layers and we’re playing instruments on the record that we can’t play all at the same time,” says Susman, adding that they had to rearrange songs to bring them from the studio to the stage. “Some of the versions are quite different, the songs are recognizable, but we’re using different instruments. For example, on Mediocre Demon, the piano riff we recorded on a piano for the record and I play that on a Farfisa organ, so the sound of it is quite different,” she says. “It has a jam side of it, the structure has evolved as we figured out how to play it live.”
At the time of our interview, Memorials were en route to Boston (Simms was driving) as they neared the end of a U.S. jaunt. A handful of days earlier, they opened for Holy Fuck at The Roxy in Los Angeles. (They saw the posters for the Yoko Ono exhibition in L.A. while in town. “We were like it’s such a shame that we can’t go and see it there,” says Susman.) Following the tour, they had more gigs lined up in Europe and the U.K.
“The finessing of things that you do when you’re making a record you have to let go of when you’re playing live,” Susman says. “It’s a bit more rough around the edges and, at times, more chaotic, but, I think we try to keep a bit of that in there and, for us as well, to be able to play around with the songs each night and not always do everything the same, there’s bits of improvisation in there.”
She adds, “Some of the songs, we haven’t totally set the structure, so we’re sort of keeping ourselves on our toes.”
All Clouds Bring Not Rain by Memorials is available now.
Liz O. is an L.A.-based writer and DJ. Follow on Instagram or sign up for the weekly, Beatique newsletter for updates on new stories and gigs.
Listen to the Beatique Mix for June, 2026, featuring music from Memorials, Yoko Ono, Scott Walker, Slayyyter, Purple Disco Machine , Madonna and more.
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