Mojo - The Music Magazine

HE'S THE SHEFFIELD Sinatra whose dial stuck at ...Sings For Only The Lonely, and 2009 was another great year for fans of his lugubrious, pre-Beatle rock'n'ballad vibes. Here he responds to MOJO's Album Of The Year accolades, recalls the songwriting "massacre" that led to Truelove's Gutter, and relives the heartache and alienation of Lady's Bridge, the "pop record" he made while watching his father die. Lois Wilson lends a sympathetic ear...

Your album is Number 3 in the MOJO Top 50 and Paul Weller picked it as one of the best things he'd heard this year...
I've never been a person for lists but it's definitely better than being voted Number 4 isn't it? Paul's grand isn't he? And that's very nice of him. He asked me to play a guitar solo on a track on his new album and I couldn't do it because I was doing something else and that was my biggest disappointment of the year. I was absolutely gutted. I had to sit on my own in a pub for an hour, I was so pissed off.

How did you feel about Truelove's Gutter when it was finished?
It was the hardest record for me. From a songwriting point of view, it was like a massacre. I had 40 plus songs and they got carved. But it's my favourite and I think my best record. I never think in terms of sales. All I've wanted to do is sell enough to be able to keep going, keep pushing and experimenting and make another record. The success of Lady's Bridge - that flew out of nowhere. I wasn't expecting that at all and that threw me.

Was it a conscious decision to make this one a darker album or did it just come about naturally?
When I came back after all that hoohah with Lady's Bridge I discovered that a lot of people who I loved deeply weren't having a great time, and they'd become like remote stars and planets to me almost, and these were people I'd known all my life and I needed to bring them closer. It was like looking through a very long telescope, when you turn it over some things look very far away and then some look very close and personal, and I needed to flip the telescope, try to make things that had become distant closer and I needed to understand them.

I'd already made my mind up to move away from what I'd done previously. I knew it would be really easy for me to do another album of three-minute pop songs and I didn't want to look in the mirror and know I'd been guilty of creative cowardice. I'd decided I was going to experiment with lots of different instruments, like the musical saw - my granddad used to play that to us when we were kids. Lots of the productions I'd done on previous records were dense and multi-layered. I wanted it to be very simple on this one but still have as much effect, for it to be very powerful but be stripped down.

What do you think of Lady's Bridge now?
I'm proud of it because I made that record through the most trying circumstances that I think anyone could possibly go through. I wrote some of my best pop songs on that record, I view it as my pop record. It wasn't intended that way but it just came out that way and it was a reaction definitely to watching my dad, one of the most beautiful people in my life, dying in front of me. He was as determined as I was to see me finish the record but he never did sadly. At the same time I was writing the soundtrack for the film Flick, so I had a very strict routine. I'd see my dad in the morning, then go in the studio, and then go and see him at night. Bear in mind I've got three kids so I was knackered with them as well - and that was every day for five months. There are some dark songs on that record like Lady Solitude and The Sun Refused To Shine but I tried not to be a grief feeder, the situation forced me to look at all the things that were going on around me, not just the supernova thing that was going on.

What's next?
Some dog walking I hope. I live right near these ancient woods, and early morning or late evening is best, when you're walking through the mist and fog.

Interview by Lois Wilson

Photo courtesy of Simon Fernandez