Molly Rymer warms the wintry basement for a festive Hyde Park Book Club gig.
On a wintry Friday night, I took myself down to Leeds’ hottest DIY grassroots venue for a festive treat; that being Molly Rymer’s last show of 2025.
After a well-received headline at Oporto, this show commemorated a year of huge successes and even higher expectations to climb. I went in blind to what was on offer, hoping to discover a new subsection of singer-songwriter music; I left feeling quietly converted.
I was lucky enough to chat to Molly before her set in the cosy alcoves of the beloved Hyde Park Book Club, where we spoke about her songwriting process and how artists like Sam Fender inspire her to write about her Rothwell roots.
“I am a very emotional person. Music’s always been a way for me to get that out. A lot of it has been heartbreak music, like having different interactions with people and feeling that out. But I do think in recent years, I have been trying to write more about where my dad grew up in coal mining towns near the Yorkshire coalfield. I think I spend so much time writing inwardly. I really love (Sam Fender’s) lyricism and would like to try and write more about what’s going on in the world around me.”
There’s a grounded sincerity to Rymer that carries through both conversation and song; nothing feels performative, just quietly assured. She intuitively hears her songs taking shape, and reveals how euphoric it is to have her bandmates translate these narratives for other people to connect with.
“It’s a great feeling to go into something and be like ‘yes, this is where I can hear you’. I do love that sense of community and talking about things that other people have experienced. There’s a song I’m playing tonight that I wrote with two other women earlier this year about a really specific experience of being women, which we all connected on. So far, everyone I’ve shown it to has also connected with it, whether they’re women or not.’
Support bands Sleepy Jean and Sam Jayne were the first blocks of wood to the fire, both close collaborators of Rymer. Sam Jayne’s voice felt delicate but emotionally direct, bearing the quintessential hallmarks of a natural singer-songwriter gift.
I was hooked the second she played a rendition of Joni Mitchell’s ‘River’, setting the reflective tone for the evening’s Christmas-tinged melancholy. Very chatty and personal, her set felt like a conversation rather than a performance.
Sleepy Jean brought equal amounts of charisma and mystique with their set.
When Rymer finally took to the stage with her gorgeous six-piece ensemble, the room visibly softened. From sharing anecdotes about passing her driving test to referencing Fleabag, she invited us into her world – a 3D diary of ramblings carried by her effortlessly sweet vocals.
Her music comes from a deeply personal yet immediately relatable place, and that connection was undeniable; when she introduced ‘Something That Survives’, a faintly enthusiastic voice from the crowd called out, “This is my favourite one!”
Rymer touched on finding her footing in the Leeds music scene, as she reminisces on the formation of her full-band project, meeting bassist and musician FINE. From then on, her project slowly evolved into more than just a traditional band set-up, collecting a patchworked family of backup singers, a drummer, a double bassist and a cellist, too. ‘They always seem to do exactly what I have in my head, which I feel really lucky for. I mostly bring the barebones, I usually have an idea for backing vocals but then we all just kind of jam it.’
Closing the night with a few festive covers of Flyte’s White Roses and the Christmas sing-along classic ‘All I Want For Christmas’ only amplified the warmth already filling the room.
The band’s ability to hold every ounce of the audience’s attention was genuinely striking. Despite never being acquainted with her music prior, it’s clear that at a Molly Rymer gig, you are no stranger – just another voice welcomed into the chorus.
This will not be the last that we hear from her, however, as she reflects on the career-affirming opportunities she had this year to develop her songwriting further: ‘I got onto a songwriting retreat earlier this year with the help of the charity Help Musicians. It was at a house down in Somerset and it was four days of fifteen of us writing songs together. That was one of the first moments in a while where I thought I could do this for my career, just to meet so many people that had the same passion, regardless of the type of music we wrote.’
‘In terms of next year, we are releasing new music at the start of the year. It’s going to be the first project that we’ve recorded as a band and we wanted to give it a live-feel. We recorded some of it at The Green Room in Bramley with producer Ed Allen. We’ve been sitting on this for over a year. But I think this year showed me the strength in taking some time out and going somewhere quiet, away from the world, to dip into some of that creativity.’
Photography by Jazz Jennings.
