While his band Divorce spent 2025 conquering festival mainstages and touring North America, Felix Mackenzie-Barrow was quietly carving out a different kind of creative path. Today, he announces his first solo project under the moniker Book of Churches, with a self-titled debut album set for release on March 6th via Gravity / Capitol. The announcement arrives with the lead single “Song By A Stranger,” a track that sets the tone for a project rooted in what Felix describes as a “naive” and “incredibly DIY” process.
Commenting on the lead single, Felix says:
“Song by a Stranger is the first song on the record because in some ways it felt like the blueprint for how I wanted to make the album. I wrote a note in my phone whilst in the back of the van about a shaft of light falling like an arm across the seats in front of me. I got home for a couple of days off and wrote the song the night I arrived. The next day I recorded it and I didn’t touch it again until Richie Kennedy mixed it in late 2025.”
The album was born in the frantic gaps of a whirlwind year, with Felix writing and recording each song in just 48 hours to preserve the “raw contents” of his brain. Avoiding the urge to over-polish, he eventually handed the tracks to mixer Richie Kennedy (known for his work with Interpol and The Last Dinner Party) to finalise the sound. The result is a move away from his band’s alt-country energy toward a timeless, folk-leaning minimalism that draws comparisons to the quiet intensity of Nick Drake, Fionn Regan, or Leonard Cohen.
At its core, Book of Churches acts as a personal travelogue, charting the heavy terrain of grief, lost love, and isolation. Felix views the project as a metaphor for a private sanctuary; a way to maintain connections across vast distances while finding his own North Star through songwriting. By trusting his singular voice and breaking his own creative rules, he has crafted a record that feels less like a polished studio product and more like a series of intimate, urgent dispatches from the road.
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