Jillian Ashford

Jillian Ashford shows up twenty minutes late, orders a Guinness he won't finish, and apologizes three times before sitting down. This is not the sullen indie frontman I was expecting. Just a twenty-three-year-old in a worn hoodie who looks genuinely worried he's wasted my time.

There's a name that trails after him everywhere. I won't write it here because you already know it, and he tenses every time someone brings it up. So I ask about Phobia's latest album instead. About that unresolved chord ending on "Silt" that's been driving music theory nerds mental on Reddit.

"Some things don't get to resolve neatly," he says, fingers tapping rhythm on the table. "The song's about grief. And grief doesn't wrap up with a bow. You just get used to carrying it."

He was sixteen when he left home. Three months after his mum died. The exact words exchanged are unspoken, but you can feel their weight in the way he goes quiet mid-sentence sometimes.

"We have different ideas about what music should be," he says when I bring it up. It's a practiced line. "That's fine. People grow apart." Except his voice drops half an octave, loses all inflection. Not fine at all.

Later, he admits: "I understand him now. The way he just shut down and kept working." Long pause. Grey eyes fix on something past my shoulder. "That's worse, actually. Understanding him."

Phobia built itself the hard way. Shit venues, borrowed equipment, eight months on Marc's sofa. They're blowing up now. Download Festival, European tours, real label interest. But success hasn't sanded down the edges.

When I saw them at Brixton Academy, Jillian performed like he was trying to crack himself open. That careful politeness vanishes on stage. All raw nerve, voice climbing from whisper to howl. People were crying. Me included.

He keeps things. A ticket stub from his first rock concert at fifteen. His mother's favourite tea he can't drink. Letters he'll never send. And somewhere, correspondence from Vienna that's been unopened for six months.