Pem has the kind of day that makes you want to change your whole life plan. “I’m well, thank you! I’ve been gardening today, planting up a new design with lots of yellow and blue flowering plants,” she says. “It’s been a busy music week, so it’s nice to get back into the gardens. I had my last show of the year on Monday, supporting Jacob Alon at KOKO, which was so magic, and now I am ready for winter hibernation.” If that sounds like a perfectly balanced existence, that’s because it basically is. Pem’s world is split between songs and soil, and both sides seem to feed the other.
For anyone meeting her for the first time, the intro is refreshingly simple. “I’m a singer, songwriter and gardener from a small town near Basingstoke,” she says. “Pem is my nickname, but I found out recently there was a suffragette called Pem and I like that.” It’s a small detail with big Pem energy: curious, a bit nerdy, definitely powerful.
What’s especially wild is that music wasn’t exactly presented as a sensible option when she was growing up. “I didn’t have a musical upbringing. Dad played a bit of guitar, and my mum played her CDs a lot, but no one in my family had ever pursued anything musical or artistic, so I didn’t really know that was an option,” she says. Then comes the bit that feels like the origin story of every bedroom musician ever, only with extra specificity. “My school finished at 2.20pm, so I was home by 2.30pm every day. I had a lot of time to myself, so I picked up the guitar and just started squeaking and humming around.” There’s something very Pem about that wording too. Not “writing songs”, not “perfecting craft”. Just squeaking, humming and seeing what happens.
If you’re expecting tales of a bustling hometown scene, think again. “There wasn’t really much of a music scene where I grew up in commuter town 101, or maybe there was? But I definitely didn’t know about it!” she says. “Music was quite a private thing for me until I moved to Bristol and then London much later on.” Which makes the arc feel even more satisfying: the private thing slowly becoming shareable, then suddenly finding its people.
Ask Pem for a career highlight, and she can’t pick just one, in a way that feels genuinely sweet rather than PR-trained. “Ooo, difficult to pick one,” she says. “I think releasing ‘cloud work’ was a big enough highlight for me in itself; people sharing how it resonated with them or things they had been through really meant a lot to me.” That connection, people recognising themselves in the songs, is clearly the point. The rest is glitter.
Being a working musician, though, comes with its own plot twists. “In many ways, it’s great. I love going on tour, I love writing music, and I love meeting people after shows,” she says. “I just didn’t know how many things there are to juggle and how easy it is for me to lose my voice! I’ve tried to curb the chatting; it hasn’t worked yet.” Consider that a Pem manifesto right there: do the thing, talk to everyone, lose your voice, do it again.
“When I’m doing something manual – pruning, tying back roses – I just find that words and melodies come easily”
The gardening side of her life isn’t a quirky detail bolted on for flavour. It’s a huge part of how she thinks and how she makes work. “After uni I realised that I just couldn’t sit down inside all day,” she says. “I’d always been interested in gardening, and then during Covid I started working for my friend’s mum and realised I loved it. I did a course and have been doing it ever since.” And then she drops in a few lines that feel like they should be framed. “I love looking after the plants, watching the garden change throughout the seasons, and building really lovely relationships with the garden owners and their dogs. One made me a sandwich today, and a little Pomeranian sat on my lap while I ate it.” Honestly, fair enough.
It’s also where the songs start. Pem talks about her “pocket sketches” like they’re just part of the working day, the same as pruning or hauling bags of mulch. “’m4 windy’ has a lot of wind and leaf-rustling sounds that I recorded when I was out gardening during some gale-force winds earlier this year,” she says. “And the lyrics for ‘other ways of landing’ came when I was cutting back some valerian and some ferns on a big farm in the West Country. I recorded the melody and the lyrics on my phone and then combined them with a nice synth line when I got home.” It’s a very specific kind of creative pipeline: field recording, muddy hands, phone demo, then the nice synth line like a ribbon on top.
So what is it about gardening that makes her brain go musical? “It puts me in a nicely detached headspace,” she explains. “I’m not exactly sure why, but when I’m doing something manual – pruning, tying back roses, or carting wheelbarrows of mulch – I just find that words and melodies come easily.” The image gets better: “I’ll find myself pacing around, mumbling to myself, then take my gloves off to scribble it down in my muddy notebook or make a voice recording.” It’s not precious, it’s practical, and it’s got a rhythm of its own. “There’s also something about returning to the same gardens and noticing the small changes through the seasons that feels quietly musical.”
Even then, she’s not actively hunting songs like butterflies. “It’s rarely ever conscious, it’s almost always when I’m a bit detached and daydreaming,” she says. “The main melody for ‘m4 windy’ came when I was driving on the motorway.” Which is both extremely relatable and slightly alarming, but let’s focus on the relatable part.
Lyrically, Pem isn’t pretending she’s writing breezy little bops either. “A lot of my music is about grief, so the writing isn’t particularly enjoyable, but it is cathartic,” she says. “I like writing with lots of symbols and metaphors, the moon, things in flight, and I love astronomy and etymology, so I like to play around with those.”
Her new EP ‘other ways of landing’ is rooted in a tiny moment that expanded into a whole world. “I remember working in a small patio garden and spotting a tiny oak tree seedling growing out of a crack in the paving,” she says. “I thought there was something lovely about something as massive as an oak tree trying to grow in such a tiny, impossible space.” That image becomes the EP’s guiding phrase. “It sparked the title ‘other ways of landing’ which I guess is about the quiet, slightly strange feeling of repeatedly arriving somewhere you don’t quite want to be but trying to stretch out a few branches anyway.”
There’s a seasonal anchor too. “Probably spring!” she says. “I started writing these songs in late winter when the bulbs and seedlings just started to poke their little tops out, and that felt symbolic.” It’s the kind of detail that makes you understand why her music feels like it has weather in it.
Compared to her breakthrough EP ‘cloud work’, the emotional texture has shifted. “’cloud work’ was explicitly about my dad passing, assault and everything that came after, so it was more like an outpouring of difficult experiences and the symbols I used to process them,” she says. “’other ways of landing’, by contrast, felt more like taking those experiences into new environments and exploring them a bit more. It feels softer, more curious, and definitely less pained.”
When she’s not making music or getting lost in gardens, her free time is, unsurprisingly, packed. “I’m writing a novel, so I add to that. It’s fiction, but maybe not all the time,” she says. “I’ve been working on it for years. I think it’ll take a long time.” Then she rattles off a list that feels like the friend you can never pin down because they’re always mid-project. “I love cooking and spend a lot of time doing that. I also love dancing, especially with my friends, so lots of that. And basically just making things, my own clothes or painting and drawing. Oh, and chatting. Lots of chatting, I love chatting. Oh, and pottering, lots of pottering and titting around.” Same, honestly.
Creatively, she’s already pulling towards the next thing. “I’m writing a lot of new songs at the moment,” she says. “I feel very drawn to the piano recently, so lots of songs on that.” And just in case anyone needed a practical takeaway with their art, Pem signs off like the world’s most charming garden oracle. “Get some mulch on the flower beds now to protect your plants during winter. Bye!”
Taken from the February 2026 issue of Dork. Pem’s EP ‘other ways of landing’ is out 30th January.
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