Rachael Lander

This was me looking happy in my suit after the final show of the EU/UK @raye tour last night in Dublin. I have so much to say about the joy of working with her but I know how much people hate a social media gig wang. I really get it. But I just wanted to say: successful artists employing musicians could learn a lot from her. As a recovering alcoholic addict I can’t fuck around with the professional situations I put myself in. If I feel so uncomfortable at work that I have to medicate myself, I can’t do that work anymore, which might sound extreme. Because it is. I am. My sponsor told me in early recovery that anything I put in front of my sobriety I would lose, any situation that might lead to me picking up a drink again wasn’t an option. Forever. The end. I’m as mindful as I can be about what I can cope with work wise. Playing for @raye though, is the onstage musical equivalent of a warm bath. She wants her team, on stage, to be as unmasked as she is. She strives to make us feel like a tight unit & uses “we” not “I” when we’re playing. She name checks her musicians every night. For somebody with my nervous system to feel not only comfortable, but actual joy, sober & unmedicated in front of 20000 people, is a miracle. I felt that miracle in every show, because she was showing me how to be myself with her bare feet & unflinching authenticity. It doesn’t matter if she’s playing a jazz club or the O2 on night 3, people at the back of the room feel seen and heard by her & her music. The huge scale of the humanity on this tour has been such a salve in the AI driven patriarchal shit fest we’re currently wading through. The ephemeral energy in the huge rooms we’ve just played with so many people in them, is down to the presence of actual humans. They’re there to be healed by music that has the actual truthy truth of lived experience within the INSANE vocals. It means a huge amount to me to play with her & the incredible musicians she surrounds herself with. Last night I felt the presence of twenty three year old drunk me, drinking vodka to get on a bus. I’m writing this mid air (& uncomfortable AF, natch) on a flight home. The CONTRAST LADS. I’m V grateful. 🙏🏼

2025 best bits in my phone photos: 1. Meeting our tiny puppy Luna and transporting in her a sling like a tiny fur baby 2. Luna becoming the shaggiest, most unkempt member of the family because we couldn’t bear to shave off her velvet soft puppy coat 3. Luna making the front pages by accident after shaking herself off with gusto at Hampstead Heath during the heatwave 4. The day the kids found a strawberry that made them laugh like drains 5. The magnolia tree in our front garden raining petals 5. Marrying @mattfrenchdrums by a Loch in Glencoe in the rain 6. Him laughing and looking peak Matt French 🤍 7. Post school chats on the bed. There have been so many of those this year. 8. First holiday to France as a four. Not washing my hair for days and existing from one meal to the next and trips to the beach. Among all the love and joyful family chaos I have had moments of such searing despair about the state of the world and how the actual fuck to exist within it with my brain and body that some days, even with all this beauty, I’ve found it tough to get out of bed. I have PMDD and this year it’s kicked me squarely in the tits. I’m trying to sort it out with hormones and whatnot but it’s really hard. Way harder than it should be. I tell you that so you don’t think my life only looks like this highlight reel. This year has been all the things all at once, but then again, I feel like that about every day that passes. I don’t normally think in terms of years. But puppies and weddings, still being gainfully employed, entering my 18th year of sobriety, my kids being a great hang, friends, family.. a husband that relishes domesticity and texts things like “Archie needs a packed lunch tomorrow love. Going to buy sandwich things on the way home. Are you out of dark chocolate?” I mean. Not bad. The new year is a weird time so I hope everyone is ok and we’re not doing the “new year new me” thing to ourselves, unless of course that works for you. I’m doing new year same me let’s try again tomorrow one day at a time sometimes one hour at a time thing instead. Also I’ll be dating all my admin 2025 until at least June because transitions are hard.

I’ve been writing poems that are the truthiest truths I’ve ever truthed and setting them to cello loops. This is a tiny snippet of “An Apology” that I wrote to my body. I’ve realised in my 40s that I’ve been perceiving it and treating it all wrong. The full filmed poem can be found in the link in my bio. This poem has made grown men cry, so I know I’m on to something. Thank you to my patient, kind, meticulous brother-in-law @bramich for filming me do this and embarking on what must have been a very tough editing process and my husband @mattfrenchdrums for recording the loops. And my body for putting up with everything I’ve thrown at it. #poetry #cello #spokenword #pmdd

As this performance started a bit of my brain said to the other bits: “Remember this. Don’t be scared. It is WILD that you’re here and it won’t happen twice.” So here it is on the grid where it will remain because it was really something to play really loud quavers in fourths and fifths for @queensofthestoneage in a trio with @richjonesviola and @ericgorfain . Adolescent me was freaking out but 41 year old me just about kept her shit together. Thank you @ericgorfain , violinist, arranger, conductor and probably zen master for having me. [The real hero of this trio performance was of course, topical oestrogen. That stuff helped penetrate the brain fog long enough to memorise 20 minutes worth of music for Act 1 of the show]. I 🤍 @mattfrenchdrums for shamelessly filming what he called “your bit” of the gig and being not only supportive but loudly delighted about the whole thing. I’ve had some of the worst anxiety of my life on that stage in orchestral cello sections wondering why I felt so much less capable of managing adrenaline than other people. It was the BEST tonic to head-bang clean and sober with abandon whilst Josh Homme shone a hand-held lamp on our faces and hands. I won’t forget it and I’m sad that it’s over. 🤘🏼🎸🤍#qotsa

I’m 18 years sober today, in spite of my brain being the way it is. “Grateful” doesn’t really cut it, semantically. I still have the “ism” of alcoholism and recovery is an every day thing, one day at a time. I still have to work very hard at being in my body/the world and finding peace there. Being in active addiction is hell. And my early recovery was hellish too, to be honest. Putting down mind altering chemicals when my mind felt so profoundly awful was a terrifying shit show. I was also appalled in the first few years to discover that recovery from alcoholism didn’t mean “happiness” it meant “life. Without anaesthesia”. Life has been EVER SO lifey and I’m still so flawed in spite of all the work I’ve done in the rooms of recovery but every year on the 23rd October, I celebrate my freedom from the kosh of booze and all its consequences. This photo was taken last week by my 10 year old son on his printy camera. At the time we were doing one of my favourite things which was sitting on his bed gossiping about school, watching my daughter practice her handstands. We were accompanied by the sounds of my husband cooking dinner and chuntering at our dog in the kitchen. Miraculously, none of those people (or animals) have never seen me drink, despite me being once entirely dependent on alcohol. For a raging drunk, this calm domestic scene is holy grail kind of stuff. I never take it for granted because addiction is an insidious wanker that will always try to sell me an escape route out of my feelings. Addiction is patient. Sometimes it waits for decades for abstinent people to forget they’re addicts and relapse with their chemical of choice which is why in the recovery community we bang on about “just for today.” Even after all these days in a row, I’m not “cured”. Today though, I am free. Loads of you help me stay sober, many of you unknowingly. If you’re thinking about stopping drinking and it feels too terrifying, take heart in knowing that there are legions of people out there doing the same thing, feeling or having felt the same terror. There’s joy and fun and crucially, freedom on the other side. You’re not on your own. 🙏🏼🤍

Went to São Paulo to dep on PlayStation the concert. Wore a spiky leather bolero. Ate fried potatoes with almost every meal. Rehearsals were scuppered by electrical storms and dodgy radio frequencies so there was no time to freak out about playing stratospheric cello solos written by the likes of @ilaneshkeri @bearmccreary and @a.wintory before it was time to actually perform them. We did two packed shows to PlayStation megafans at @brasilgameshow and I was back in London this morning in time to do the school run. I am jet lagged AF and part potato but it’s not every day you get to wear studded leather and bosh out music that makes an audience whoop on the other side of the world. Thanks @_alexmarshall for getting me in and the rest of the band who are all lovely, incredibly talented and calmly philosophical in the face of pre show technological adversity. [aside: I find long haul flying an ordeal that makes me long for a time when I could take something mind altering and check the hell out. I am braced against turbulence, intolerant of all the smells and noises and masking some kind of primal fear that my body is in a tin can hurtling over an ocean. I HATE IT but I love seeing new people places and things, so I do it. My only solution is to watch intense films and cry the kind of cry that I can only do mid air for an odd sort of release but even then you have to contain heaving sobbing when sitting next to a stranger. It is a minefield. I finally dropped off for an anxious snooze in the ninth hour only to be woken up by a cabin crew man called Clint who wanted me to eat a nuclear hot SQUARE omelette. The whole thing is MAD. It doesn’t matter how often I fly. My nervous system responds like WTAF?! every time. Sharing this in case I appear all “oh here’s me casually going to Brazil.” There was nothing casual about it. I had to watch Oppenheimer and the Green Mile and contemplate life death and the universe to soothe my existential panic. Also asking a woman with my brain to pack for a 5 day trip is an hilariously tall order. I know my neurodivergent/recovery community will know what I’m talking about. Anyway I did it and it feels like a win. 💪🏽🙏🏼🇧🇷]

The world feels terrifying and violent and frightening right now so I’m just leaving this here as a kind of photographic gratitude list for myself. Sometimes after looking at the socials and news and all the horrors my brain feels really dark. So I look at the photos on my phone to remind me that beautiful stuff is happening right in front of me, all the time. Being joyful is an act of rebellion and I feel fiercer about protecting that now than I ever have. And yes we have to engage in all the activism and donate and write letters to MPs and sign petitions and march and all of the things. But nothing pisses off the fascists more than love and joy and humanness. So here is some of that from my photos app of recent nice things that have happened in our house.

Myself and @patricksavage_music have recorded more Variations by Johan Halvorsen, this time on Handel's Sarabande, which was an absolute VIBE back in the 17 noughties, when they liked their dancing SOLEMN. We recorded the Passacaglia last year and it was relatively painless so I naively assumed this one would be too. I listened to it in the car and thought, "that'll be fine." Then of course I sat down to learn it and it was not fine lads. By any stretch. So I had to do some actual practice, which due to my brain being the way it is causes me and my family real angst. If you're like me and you have some....quirks, brain wise, you might be MONOTROPIC when you work. (Google it because it's comPLEX.) For me this means that once I'm doing a thing, I can't not do that thing. So if I'm interrupted whilst doing the thing, I feel completely inappropriate levels of rage at having to switch my attention to another thing. (I am a regular customer at ISmash Phone repairs.) A lot of the time the rage is directed at myself for making a mistake and having to stop playing a phrase from the beginning to the end. I mean. EXHAUSTING. And SUPER fun to be around....but anyway. I practiced this and eschewed all other tasks and people for a few days and I'm glad because Patrick is Savage not only by name. It's an honour just to try and keep up with him. This was produced by Mike Ponder, edited and mastered by @adaqkhan and filmed with expert care and patience by @ryanrtw . The audio is out on all streaming platforms now.

Watching @raye hold @bbcglasto audience in the palm of her hand last night with raw talent, humility and total, unflinching authenticity was a personal glimmer of hope as everything everywhere feels like it’s on fire. It was an everything kind of a day…. Did some sweating in a suit, watched thousands of people weep as they resonated with Raye’s fearless description of sexual assault, played with a world class horn section and her monster regular band, and ate chips and pickled onions in a catering tent. Onstage I thanked the universe that I’m still sober and able to feel ALL OF THE THINGS and including big ephemeral unifying musical connections that happen sometimes. It still blows my mind that @raye is an independent artist. She said at the end of her set that she’ll still be singing when she’s 75 and I believe her. The set is on iplayer and it’s mega. Also thank you @leonnealphoto for these photographs.

Finally after premiering in Cannes last year this movie is out in cinemas across China this weekend - ‘She’s Got No Name’ soundtrack is available on Spotify. Shout out to @rachaellohellacello who absolutely conjured the raw pain of the protagonist in her cello solos. Genius playing as always ❤️‍🔥

Started a Substack! Because writing helps. People make their posts into reels now and I have no idea what I’m doing but here are some little excerpts. If you want to read about the trenches of long term recovery and neurodivergence, that’s what I’ll tell you about. Link to full post in my stories and bio.