It’s been three years since The Staves’ fourth album, Good Woman, soundtracked a world in recovery. With the haze of quarantine still looming overhead and political unrest at an all-time high, the soul-bearing melodies of the Staveley-Taylor clan offered listeners 45 minutes of pure catharsis.

While the group may be down in numbers since their last record – with Emily leaving to raise her young children – the sisters’ sky-scaling harmonies are alive and well. Back with their fifth studio album, All Now, Jessica and Camilla Staveley-Taylor are ready to start the next era of their musical careers by returning to their roots.

“It is slightly different with it just being two of us,” Jessica says, “but, because it's been a new chapter, it feels like there are new rules with more freedom and experimentation. We're not completely rewriting what the band is, but this is definitely a new iteration of it.”

Faced with the age-old question of “Where do we go from here?”, the sisters have spent the last three years looking inward, as they reconnect with themselves, their bond and their sound.

“It forces you to lay everything out and take stock and think, ‘Well, okay, how do we want this to work? How do we want to make music? What kind of band are we now?’” Camilla adds. “We've been very cognisant about things – maybe for the first time. It's very easy to just be on the treadmill, and go from situation to situation and not have direction. I feel like we've had a lot of direction with this one.”

All Now was born out of change. Inspired by the immense personal and global shifts that have occurred since the release of Good Woman, The Staves’ latest album is a declaration of unity and renewal delivered in two-part harmony.

“There was a slight crisis feeling at one point where we hadn't written songs in ages," Camilla explains. "The last record was finished and it was like, ‘Are we ready to actually do this? Do we need more time off? Do we need to go and do something else? Should one of us be like a yoga instructor for a year and move to California or something?’ We were kind of just taking time to work out what the next step should be."

But from that uncertainty came a new-found dedication to their craft. After a period of rampant unpredictability, the siblings were able to find comfort in a sense of routine. Armed with Tupperware containers of celery sticks and baby carrots, Jessica and Camilla spent their days tucked away in their London recording studio, slowly breaking down their own walls.

“Sounds really rock'n'roll, doesn't it?” Camilla laughs, as her sister describes their desperate attempts to “act like grown-ups” with daily packed lunches and alcohol-free evenings.

“We tried to treat it like an office job,” Jessica says. “We were like, ‘Let's go in at 9:00 and let's finish at 5:00. Let's have a routine, and let's try to be healthy.’ Until then life had felt very unstructured for quite a long time.”

Having recently made the switch from Atlantic Records to Communion Music, the pair have fully embraced the "restrictions" that come with signing to an indie label. In the past, their major-label solution to most problems was money, but with a new record comes a new approach. Rather than flying from one studio to another in search of inspiration, the sisters hibernated in London, adjusting to – and flourishing within – the limitations of an indie record label.

“Restrictions are really good, especially if you've got a mind that can go down dark alleyways and be super critical,” Camilla explains. “You're forced to stop over analysing things and do them in a simpler way.”

“I always think about how they made records in the 60s and 70s," Jessica adds. "They only had like eight channels for tracks in the studio desks. Those kinds of restrictions can breed lots of inspired choices because you’re forced to make things work. It can be the same with cooking. If you've only got three ingredients, you might make something amazing versus having every possible choice in front of you.”

After months of writing, the sisters flew to LA in March of 2023 to record the album with Grammy Award-winning producer and Good Woman collaborator John Congleton.

“He's very creative, very outside of the box, but also very nurturing and receptive to ideas,” Jessica says of the Texas-born producer. “Having worked with him on the last record, it just felt like we needed to go back and do round two because it was so much fun. John's very bold in the production decisions he makes, which suits us well, because we have a tendency to overthink things a lot. So it's really nice to have someone who will just make a bold choice and stand behind it.”

The result is an album that truly is, as we described in our Hot Press review, “unencumbered and fast as lightning.” Simultaneously tumultuous and hopeful, the album spirals through a wonderful arch of human emotion and ends with the warm embrace of self-acceptance.

The Staves play Dolans Warehouse, Limerick (May 29) and The Button Factory, Dublin (May 31 & June 1).