“I really appreciate being present and music gives that feeling of being really present in a room with everyone,” says Gotts Street Park keyboard player Tom Henry. “It feels quite spiritual for me.” The Leeds and York-based group, rounded out by bassist/producer Josh Crocker and guitarist Joe Harris, have been creating this sense of togetherness for well over a decade. Along with an extended universe of regular collaborators, which includes vocalists such as Celeste and Rosie Lowe, the trio have developed a unique brand of hip-hop-influenced neo-soul that kicked off with 2017’s much-hyped ‘Volume One’ EP. Since then, they’ve pulled off an astonishing run of releases that led to 2023’s acclaimed debut album ‘On the Inside’. Now they’re back with its gorgeous follow-up, ‘Somewhere Between’. A departure from their previous work, the new record draws on richly emotional folk and Americana, with Blaze Foley, Jessica Pratt and Big Thief on heavy rotation around the time of its recording. The result combines their production prowess with even greater warmth than before, as they draw on classic songwriting with a cast list that includes the aforementioned collaborators as well as Celeste, Olive Jones, Pip Millet, Matt Maltese, Sofia & The Antoinettes, anaiis and Rosie Lowe. It’s the culmination of a fascinating journey so far. Joe and Tom met while studying music in Leeds and encountered Josh in the city’s experimental jazz scene – though Josh once said he saw the group as “to the left” of that creative enclave. True enough, the friends soon realised that their combined passions really lay in hip-hop and soul, as they each worshipped artists such as Aretha Franklin. A fervour for analogue, in-the-room recording techniques led Gotts Street Park to recreate the warm tones of great ‘60s soul labels such as Stax. Along the way, they’ve amassed almost four million monthly Spotify listeners, racked up more than 450 million global streams across platforms and written and produced for the likes of Kali Uchis and Rachel Chinouriri. Fast-forward to the present-day and they’re embarking on an epic 22-date world tour that includes stops at the legendary Newport Jazz Festival and the inaugural London edition of The Roots Picnic (founded by Questlove and Black Thought of The Roots), as well as a headline show at London’s Roundhouse. They’ve achieved this with a special kind of chemistry. Gotts Street Park share an interest in spirituality and are inspired by writers such as Rupert Spira, who teaches that the path to inner peace is about realising that we’re all interconnected, rather than isolated individuals. “I don’t actively subscribe to any particular [spiritual] practice,” says Josh, who has explored Buddhism, “but having really gone into all that stuff leaves you with something that will always be there, even if it’s just in the way you perceive reality or remain open-minded to a lot of things. I feel that music is one of the only magical things we’ve got left. Especially with AI music and the modern approach to things, there’s something special about people playing music together.” “When it comes to making music,” adds Joe, “we take our egos out of the way. It’s not about Joe and Josh and whoever the vocalist is. We’re just making sound and enjoying ourselves. Of course that can be understood spiritually. Of course it’s spiritual and of course it’s natural.” This everyday spirituality, he laughs, is as normal as “eating your tea”. Since forming in 2012, then, Gotts Street Park have created a beautiful antidote to the world of AI slop, doomscrolling, self-interested tech billionaires and smartphone addictions that leave us feeling ever more isolated. For ‘Somewhere Between’, they got together in a room with their featured vocalists and created magic, as the singers conjured their own lyrics after tuning into the trio’s music. “Writing with GSP is always a pleasurable experience,” says Rosie Lowe. “The music is so emotive that songs seem to flow with ease.” Having previously recorded in their own self-contained studios up north, GSP branched out this time around, with ‘Somewhere Between’ recorded in York, Leeds and London. This was born out of necessity, as Josh’s new home studio in York hadn’t been completed by the time they started recording, but the shift to new environments and equipment helped to shake up their sound. Rather than “everything having the same sonic palette,” says Josh, “there’s been more of a mix”. In London, he reflects, “it’s easier for artists to just pop in, rather than them making the trip to us – especially with new people that we hadn’t collaborated with before, like Sofia.” This breeziness released the pressure of each collaborative session, adding spontaneity that’s palpable in the songs. Take the eerily gorgeous ‘Slippy’, an instrumental track that started life as a piano line that Tom accidentally hit upon in north-east London’s Studio Orbb as they waited for Celeste to arrive. It just goes to show how open to new ideas, spaces and people Gotts Street Park have been in the making of ‘Somewhere Between’. The studio sessions amounted to approximately 10 days in total, rather than taking months, as previous albums had. “Most of the time,” explains Joe, “we go in with a completely blank slate and just jam and see what sticks and feels good. With the three of us and the musicians we click with, there’s an openness. If Tom and Josh feel like they want a tune to go a certain way, I’m always like, ‘Let’s try it’ – even if I’m not sure. That’s why things get done quickly.” In “the best cases”, he adds, they’d write and track a song from start to finish in a day or two. Some things haven’t changed, however. Although the group’s aforementioned obsession with analogue equipment has often been noted, it’s been widely overlooked that they came to their retro soul influences not from the original records but via ‘90s hip-hop samples. “Dr. Dre introduced me to Donny Hathaway,” explains Joe. “Madlib and Dilla were really big ones, too. That’s where I first learned to love soul.” There was no big conversation about the band’s decision to channel these influences into the modern Americana of ‘Somewhere Between’, but they were all listening to that type of music, with Josh mainlining Neil Young and other “early ‘70s stuff” too. Check out the aching ‘Birds Don’t Fly’ (featuring Matt Maltese) or the noirish ‘State of America’ (Sofia & the Antoinettes) and it’s clear that this approach has unlocked something special. There’s a sense of melancholia throughout the record, as is often the case in its Americana and ‘70s influences, but the group always summon a sense of hope, too. Says anaiis of the velveteen ‘Don’t Give Up’: “I just wanted to write something to help us all keep going. Times have been hard for [everyone] for a while now and I feel like Gotts Street Park’s music has that feel-good feeling.” Ultimately, it’s all about the collective. Indeed, many younger songwriters are now beginning to explore analogue ways of working, having previously recorded digitally and remotely. “More and more people are clocking on that it’s nicer to play music with people than just record it,” notes Tom. “It’s fun and it creates really good results. It’s weird because it seems really obvious, that, doesn’t it, but somehow it’s been lost a little bit.” Of course, Gotts Street Park have been working in this way from the start. The world, it seems, is coming back around to their way of thinking. And no wonder: the human connection and sense of community that they’ve forged with their extended network of collaborators feels more vital than ever. As Tom puts it: “Over the years, we’ve learned to allow it to grow as a collective idea. That isn’t that easy to come by, to find people who can click like that and allow ideas to flow in that way. It’s quite a magical thing.”