The Pearl Harts set to unleash Love, Chaos on The Edge of The Wedge, Southsea

​It is a little more than five years since they released their debut, Glitter and Spit – a high-octane rock’n’roll romp.

But now the duo, Kirsty Lowrey on lead vocals and guitar and Sara Leigh-Shaw on drums, samples and backing vocals, have finally released their second album and they’re ready to make up for lost time.

Named after a female bandit from the wild west-era, the pair have retained that outlaw spirit.

‘She was a bad-ass,’ says Kirsty of their namesake. ‘When you're in the beginnings of a band you come up with loads of names and things come up in conversation, that one stuck because it felt like it had gumption!’

‘It felt like it had a bit of meaning behind it,’ confirms Sara.

Getting us up to speed on the intervening years, Sara explains: ’We released our first album in 2018, then we did an EP in 2019, and we were just going to start writing a new album just as Covid hit.

‘Me and Kirsty we were on the up at that stage and it felt like we lost that momentum. It almost feels like we're coming in with our first album again, even though we have this history behind us.

NOW READ: Hip-hop legends Arrested Development are coming to Portsmouth | Interview

‘The thing people won't realise is that in that time we also changed our manager, we've changed our agent – they sadly passed away in Covid – so we've had a lot of changes behind the scenes as well.’

While the two used to be housemates, Sara now lives in Kent while Kirsty is in South East London. During the lockdowns they began writing the new album, sending files back and forward to each other.

With the new way of working, the new material clearly has a different sound to their debut – that’s not to say they’ve lost their edge.

‘I spent loads of time learning a bit of production and seeing what I could do at home and experimenting with that,’ says Sara. ‘We're a live band, and recorded a lot of tracks live in the past, but this time we wrote a song and sent it back and forwards, so this is much more of a “produced album” in the sense that we'd never played any of the songs live before.’

‘The first album, most of that was our set at the time, and we added a few songs to it and changed a few things,’ adds Kirsty. ‘But this time we've made the songs and we're preparing to play them live.’

‘It's massively flipped on its head,’ laughs Sara.

The advance notices for the album mentioned it was also about saying 'goodbye to unhealthy patterns'. What did they mean by this?

‘It's not just for us, it's more for people in general,’ explains Sara. ‘I think that during the pandemic, from the conversations I've had with my friends, it's made everyone reflect a bit, and realise that maybe the way we all live our lives, on all levels, is a bit stuck in its ways and it doesn't have to be.

‘It's more saying there are unhealthy patterns on all levels, some people might struggle with workaholism, some people might have drug problems.

‘The title of Love, Chaos is that if you get to the point of having chaos, it generally means that something needs to change. So you can "love chaos”, or you can say goodbye to chaos, “love, chaos”. All of this has happened "love – comma – chaos", goodbye, see ya! The comma is key!’

The venue the Harts are playing here is part of the proudly independent Wedgewood Rooms. The pair have been closely involved in the work of the Music Venues Trust (MVT), the body set up to support and fight for independent venues across the UK. During this year’s Independent Venues Week back in February they hit the road for a run of gigs.

‘We're patrons of the MVT, and we've always played independent venues,’ says Sara, ‘they've always been a big part of our career. It just felt good to be part of that. And we've not done a run of dates since 2019! It was the first time we've ever done five shows back-to-back.’

They play The Edge of The Wedge on Monday, May 22 – rescheduled from May 18. Original tickets remain valid. Go to wedgewood-rooms.co.uk.