Book of Churches shares new single 'The Quiet Was A Heron'
Book of Churches' Felix Mackenzie-Barrow
Book of Churches, the solo project from the breakthrough alt-country band Divorce's co-vocalist and guitarist Felix Mackenzie-Barrow, is today sharing a new single from his upcoming debut release. His debut album of the same name will be released on 6th March via Gravity / Capitol Records, and new single 'The Quiet Was A Heron' is out everywhere now.
When Book of Churches was announced at the top of the year with lead single 'Song By A Stranger' - a song that Felix describes "as the blueprint for how I wanted to make the album" - a candid, and profoundly raw body of work was duly promised. While touring extensively with Divorce through the last few years, Felix was snatching moments away in isolation, pressing forward with a writing process that describes as “incredibly DIY” and “kind of naive.” Each song was written in one day, recorded the next, and left largely untouched until the album was handed over to Richie Kennedy (Interpol, The Last Dinner Party) for mixing. Charting lost love, dread, grief and anger, ‘Book of Churches’ was about breaking some of his own creative rules, trusting his own singular voice, and committing to “the raw contents of my brain.” The result is a timeless minimalism in the tradition of folk singer-songwriters like Nick Drake and Fionn Regan, or Leonard Cohen.
Felix comments on the new single: "The Quiet Was A Heron arrived at the end of summer, in 2024. I watched a heron fly at dusk above the noise and chaos of a festival in the Brecon Beacons and wondered how it perceived us from up there. It was a fleeting, almost out-of-body experience. It led me back to a memory of the family dog digging up the bones of a heron buried many years before in a black binbag in my parents’ garden. It is an angry song, angry that we as a species render so many gentle, beautiful, irreplaceable lives so unliveable."
Continuing about the album he says: “It feels a bit like a travelogue. In some ways, when I wrote these songs, I was talking to the person I was no longer in a relationship with – just saying hello. Sometimes, the songs were attempts at looking for a North Star that I could speak to. It's this idea of how big the world is, and how precious those few connections that you have with people are, and how you can feel those so acutely across vast spaces and times. Book of Churches is basically a metaphor for how I felt making these songs. These songs are like my version of whatever church is.”
Pre-order the debut album Book of Churches here.
Hear new single 'The Quiet Was A Heron' on streaming services here and share the video on YouTube below.
Book of Churches UK headline tour dates 2026
Tickets are on sale here.
23 April - The Hope & Ruin, Brighton, UK
25 April - The Castle, Manchester, UK
26 April - The Hug & Pint, Glasgow, UK
28 April - Belgrave Music Hall, Leeds, UK
29 April - The Cube, Bristol, UK
30 April - St Pancras Old Church, London, UK
01 May - Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, UK
More about Book of Churches
“It started out as a way of staying sane, then it began to form its own identity,” Felix Mackenzie-Barrow says of his new solo venture, Book of Churches. The co-vocalist and guitarist of Nottingham alt-country quartet Divorce has spent most of the last few years either building up to the band’s acclaimed full-length debut Drive to Goldenhammer, released in March 2025, or touring Europe and North America in support of it. In rare snatches of downtime, he began working on his own material – initially as a way to hold on to his sense of self while travelling and spending so much time in a group, but partly to scratch an itch that sat outside the Divorce world.
Book of Churches is intimate at every level. With Felix squirrelling away on the songs in isolation, its self-titled debut is a collection of campfire songs laid out in the order in which they were written and produced at home on GarageBand. The arrangements are warm but stripped back; the kind that lend themselves to being played impromptu while travelling with just a guitar case and a tank of petrol.
Each song was written in one day, recorded the next, and left largely untouched until the album was handed over to Richie Kennedy (Divorce, Interpol, The Last Dinner Party) for mixing. Overthinking and perfectionism were abandoned in favour of intuition and looseness. “Because no one was teaching me, I invented this school of production for myself,” he chuckles. “But what's amazing is [Richie] is really amplifying that and allowing for the idiosyncrasies of the way I've worked on it to come through and be celebrated.”
The lyrics were pulled from notes he kept on his phone while on the road, and in the aftermath of a breakup. Caught between people and places, there is a transitional feel to Book of Churches; a meditative acceptance to the snapshots, impressions, and memories that are part personal diary entry, part letter to a former flame. “It feels a bit like a travelogue,” says Felix. “In some ways, when I wrote these songs, I was talking to the person I was no longer in a relationship with – just saying hello.
“Sometimes, the songs were attempts at looking for a North Star that I could speak to,” he continues. “It's this idea of how big the world is, and how precious those few connections that you have with people are, and how you can feel those so acutely across vast spaces and times.”
The moniker crystalised when Felix noticed that he had been repeatedly drawing tiny churches in bleak settings and couldn’t quite explain why – though he suspects he was longing for a feeling of safety, and making that place for himself using the materials of a place where he was never able to find it. Book of Churches, then, turns the idea of a place of worship – a presence that bears down on you, rather than a presence you bring to it – on its head. There is an almost spiritual sense of peace in these songs about memory, loss, and gratitude even in sadness.
“Book of Churches is basically a metaphor for how I felt making these songs,” he says. “These songs are like my version of whatever church is.”
Book of Churches - Book of Churches album tracklisting
1. Song By A Stranger
2. All The Good Things
3. There You Go I Love You
4. North Atlantic Ocean
5. The Quiet Was A Heron
6. I Lean
7. Big Love
8. Hard Dride
9. Catalpa In The Sky
10. Stones In Your Bag
Book of Churches: Instagram
