Love Rarely – have today announced their much anticipated debut album ‘Pain Travels’ & also released a brand new single and video for the track ‘Will’

Emerging from the heart of Leeds’ flourishing alternative scene, following their formation in 2023, the fantastic Love Rarely have today announced their much anticipated debut album ‘Pain Travels’ which is set for release on April 10th through Big Scary Monsters (BSM). The band have also released a brand new single and video for the track ‘Will’. You can catch the band live in February on the UK The Callous Daoboys tour (which has now completely sold out, even following venue upgrades), with the London show happening on the 28th February at The Underworld. 

Love Rarely are a volatile hybrid of math rock, emo, and hardcore. Having already and rapidly carved out a reputation as one of the UK’s most emotionally fearless math-rock outfits, the five-piece have been redefining what vulnerability can sound like within heavy music. Weaving angular, technically demanding melodies with an unflinching lyrical openness that refuses to shy away from life’s darker corners. They balance intricate, off-kilter guitar work with cathartic explosiveness, creating sonic terrain that feels deeply human.

The debut album ‘Pain Travels’, captures the fullest picture of who Love Rarely have become. Shaped over the course of a year in spare bedrooms and improvised recording spaces, the record chronicles the band’s collective experience of family trauma, toxic households, and the complexity of navigating adulthood with scars that shape but no longer define them. 

” ‘Pain Travels’ takes you on a journey of attempting to cope with life when you might not have been dealt the best hand,” guitarist Dan Dewsnap explains. “It ended up being a deeper and darker record than we initially thought it would be, but that speaks to the authenticity on show. There’s a lot of positivity too. We’re basically saying things have been tough, but it’s going to be okay.”

Entirely self-produced by guitarist Lew Taylor, ‘Pain Travels’ is a testament to Love Rarely’s uncompromising DIY ethos: where band mates Courtney Levitt (vocals), Dan Dewsnap (guitar) Dan Gilson (bass) and Leo Godfrey (drums) would essentially write and record their parts separately then come together to painstakingly shape each track into its final form. “We all create best on our own and then it all comes together. I don’t think we’ll ever be a ‘write in the practice room together’ band. We’re all too fussy and particular I think. The process was challenging, it’s not necessarily normal to have to worry about whether the kids playing in the street are in the latest vocal take.” laughs Dewsnap. “Lew has an amazing setup but Courtney and I have very basic recording equipment which comes with its own challenges. We spent a long time in our spare room which we have decided we’re not going in now for a long time. It’s getting cobwebs and gathering dust. Until the next.”

The album’s thematic core runs through key tracks ‘Through Families’, ‘Haunted’, and ‘Severed’, songs that confront generational pain, self-contempt, and the weight of inherited trauma with lyrical directness rather than metaphor. In ‘Through Families’, Levitt and Dewsnap’s stark lines “so pull up the family tree, the roots are soaked in alcohol…” and “I can’t change you, but I tried” draw from real experiences of alcohol-related family trauma and the difficult act of releasing yourself from responsibility for another’s self-destruction. Meanwhile, Taylor’s writing on ‘Haunted’ explores the idea of being pursued by parts of yourself: “I’ve been haunted by you all my life, couldn’t leave you if I tried,” a moment of brutal self-reckoning wrapped in aching melody.

Other personal battles appear across ‘Pain Travels,’ including ‘Dormant’, written by Levitt in response to a family member’s progressing dementia. Such intensely personal threads tangle together into something bigger than individual pain; an exploration of growth, survival, and creative transformation, where their complex childhoods (once sources of confusion, sadness, and isolation) have now become the very fuel for their art.

“It’s been an ongoing battle that’s sort of progressed along with the album which has been very difficult to try and navigate for Courtney. It felt extremly cathartic to know that in this one song, she was able to say what she needed to say about this subject” says Dewsnap. 

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