Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Jacob Collier has built a remarkable career as a multi
Speaker 2: instrumentalist and arranger, known for his complex harmonic approach and
Speaker 2: collaborative spirit. He first gained attention as a teenager posting
Speaker 2: multi track videos from his childhood bedroom in North London.
Speaker 2: In twenty thirteen, his cover of Stevie wonders Don't You
Speaker 2: Worry About a Thing caught the eye of the Quincy Jones,
Speaker 2: who began mentoring him and helped launch his career. Over
Speaker 2: the past seven years, Jacob's released four albums in his
Speaker 2: Jesse series, ambitious, wide ranging projects featuring collaborations with artists
Speaker 2: ranging from Torre Amis to Coldplay. He's won multiple Grammy
Speaker 2: Awards and developed a following through his inventive live performances
Speaker 2: and his willingness to share his deep knowledge of music
Speaker 2: theory with fans online. Now, Jacob has made a dramatic
Speaker 2: shift with his new album, The Light for Days. Recorded
Speaker 2: in just four days using only a custom five string guitar,
Speaker 2: It's a stripped down, intimate collection that explores folk, classical
Speaker 2: and jazz influences with notable restraint. On today's episode, Bruce
Speaker 2: Headlam talks to Jacob Collier about why he decided to
Speaker 2: limit himself to a single instrument after years of layered,
Speaker 2: maximalist production. He discusses the custom five string guitar built
Speaker 2: for him by Taylor's master luthier Andy Powers, and how
Speaker 2: its unique tuning opened up new harmonic possibilities. He also
Speaker 2: talks about working with Johnny Mitchell, the influence of artists
Speaker 2: like John Martin and Brian Wilson, and how growing up
Speaker 2: singing Bach Carl's with his family shaped his approach to harmony.
Speaker 2: And he performed several songs from the new album live
Speaker 2: in the studio. This is Broken Record, real musicians, real conversations.
Speaker 2: Here's Bruce Headlam with Jacob Collier.
Speaker 3: Sounds that you do.
Speaker 4: Mm hm.
Speaker 1: H m hm hm cool.
Speaker 5: All right, you want to have a seat there and
Speaker 5: we'll chat.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I'll start here right.
Speaker 5: Yeah you can. You can go back and forth as
Speaker 5: you wish. So, Jacob, welcome back to Broken Record.
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 5: Well, thank you so much for coming in. And we
Speaker 5: are talking about your new album, The Light for Day. Yes,
Speaker 5: so tell me about making this this album.
Speaker 3: Yes, So, I've spent the majority of the last seven
Speaker 3: years making these four radically collaborative albums called Jesse. Jesse
Speaker 3: only won two, three, four, and these were very very
Speaker 3: broad creatively, very sort of extortionate, you could say, very
Speaker 3: very very very diverse, very multiple layered, sort of kaleidoscopic albums,
Speaker 3: and I knew that after finishing them, I want i'd
Speaker 3: want to try something different. I didn't have any firm ideas,
Speaker 3: but I knew in the back of my head, I
Speaker 3: had this thought that'd be fun to embrace the idea
Speaker 3: of making a record with just one instrument, to sort
Speaker 3: of limit the palette. And what I ended up with
Speaker 3: with this record was a four day window before my
Speaker 3: tour began in May. I was going to go to
Speaker 3: Asia to play some shows there, and I thought, what
Speaker 3: if I make the whole album in four days. So
Speaker 3: it was these two limitations. It was four day window
Speaker 3: and a five string guitar, and that's how this album
Speaker 3: came to be.
Speaker 5: And it is very sparse sounding for people who know
Speaker 5: your music, how many tracks would you use on a
Speaker 5: typical song on this album compared to some of the
Speaker 5: songs you did on Jesse, Well.
Speaker 3: Everything from two to fifty probably on this album. On Jesse,
Speaker 3: it's you know, there was easily in the hundreds for
Speaker 3: every song. You know, there'd be moments where I'd have
Speaker 3: you know, audience members from around the world involved, which
Speaker 3: is many, many hundreds of microphones on top of orchestras
Speaker 3: that I recorded, or choirs I recorded, and multiple instruments,
Speaker 3: multiple vocal parts. This album was It's just a different
Speaker 3: style of infinity. You know, I'm a firm believer that
Speaker 3: you can render infinity out of anything. You can render
Speaker 3: it out of infinity itself, but you can also render
Speaker 3: it out of much more finite terms. So yeah, with
Speaker 3: this album, I really I just I enjoyed both the
Speaker 3: limited scale of the palette but also the timeframe. I
Speaker 3: think it helped me make decisions because there's an unlimited
Speaker 3: amount of things possible at all times, something I've come
Speaker 3: to experience. So I think with this album it was
Speaker 3: fun to really enjoy kind of that tight window for
Speaker 3: making decisions. I also think it was fun to really
Speaker 3: kind of like extrapolate on all the tonalities possible with
Speaker 3: this five string guitar, because it's not just like a
Speaker 3: singing songwriter folk record. There's also voices and other laid
Speaker 3: guitars and sort of these colorful worlds, the colorful worlds,
Speaker 3: but I feel like there's something that this guitar gives
Speaker 3: as a spirit that just provides a sort of context
Speaker 3: for the storytelling in a way that was quite satisfying
Speaker 3: in the end.
Speaker 5: You've talked in the past about how you called the
Speaker 5: decoration the edge of songs, the multiple tracks, the vocal
Speaker 5: things you add, the the you know, altered chords. You
Speaker 5: think of those almost immediately when you're thinking of a
Speaker 5: so a song you're covering. In this case, you really
Speaker 5: restricted that in a way. A lot of these songs,
Speaker 5: and you do some beautiful covers Close your Eyes and
Speaker 5: and Beach Boys Song and Norwegian Wood. There's not that
Speaker 5: much re harmonization, which of course is one of your
Speaker 5: one of your signature moves. Did you go in thinking
Speaker 5: that way or did the guitar just lend itself to
Speaker 5: a maybe more straight ahead approach.
Speaker 3: I think I found myself wanting to just do justice
Speaker 3: to these songs in their own right. There are a
Speaker 3: couple of expensive moments, for sure, but I would say
Speaker 3: much fewer that I am used to. I think the
Speaker 3: thing with this record, more than anything harmonic that inspired
Speaker 3: me was it's like it's a world of a particular
Speaker 3: world of of that that the sound of the instrument,
Speaker 3: the way in which the guitar lends itself to I
Speaker 3: think it's just it's a different kind of decoration. Like
Speaker 3: one of the things with this album I really enjoyed
Speaker 3: to do was this this thing where you you know,
Speaker 3: you have essentially a live take of a song. So
Speaker 3: I stood and I performed like an entirety of a song,
Speaker 3: vocal and guitar texts. This is album. Normal people record albums.
Speaker 3: It's quite novel for me. I usually record all the
Speaker 3: elements separately and collide them later. But with that full take,
Speaker 3: I think there was an amount that that was the
Speaker 3: unification for the ideas and the decoration I think I
Speaker 3: had later was was sometimes it was sonically interesting, but
Speaker 3: I think it was less sort of like harmonically driven,
Speaker 3: and I think in a way that's always been in
Speaker 3: my work and always been in the music. But I
Speaker 3: think I've put more emphasis on some of the harmonic
Speaker 3: irresponsibilities you could say, of the past than I did
Speaker 3: on this particular album.
Speaker 5: You've talked a lot about the harmony and the sounds
Speaker 5: on this guitar. You should tell us about your guitar.
Speaker 5: Many people know you play a five string guitars, how
Speaker 5: it's tuned, how you see.
Speaker 3: It, So this is a fun story. I grew up
Speaker 3: playing a four string guitar when I was just a
Speaker 3: wee lad called a tenor guitar, and they're rife into
Speaker 3: the folk music, especially in England, and I never really
Speaker 3: got on too well with the six string guitar. Like
Speaker 3: as a kid, it wasn't something that appealed to me greatly.
Speaker 3: It wasn't something that threw itself into my imagination and
Speaker 3: provided things. I think one of the reasons was because
Speaker 3: you know, the foundations of the guitar are based in
Speaker 3: shapes that when you play them, they sound familiar, and
Speaker 3: I think as a child, I was always excited by
Speaker 3: things that sounded unfamiliar. And when I heard first of
Speaker 3: the ten of guitar, it felt both like something I knew,
Speaker 3: but it also felt new and strange and unfamiliar in
Speaker 3: a particular way. So that the ten of guitar, I
Speaker 3: can show you the ten of guitar as being a
Speaker 3: for scring guitar was tuned like this, which is the
Speaker 3: same as like a violin or I suppose it's a
Speaker 3: similar system to a cello, same as a mandolin, things
Speaker 3: like that. So fifth's fifth based tunings. What I tended
Speaker 3: to do as a child was to tune the top
Speaker 3: string down a tone to their So that was my
Speaker 3: that was that was the sound of the guitar for
Speaker 3: me for so many years.
Speaker 5: And I say, you've had a fifth to fifth, and
Speaker 5: then I had.
Speaker 3: A fifth, fifth, and a fourth and four and crucially
Speaker 3: I had this octave here. So I got used to
Speaker 3: that idea that you could you could find the sort
Speaker 3: of the parallative and use it. So it developed a
Speaker 3: bunch of shapes for this tuning, and the more I
Speaker 3: played it, the more I realized, oh, it'd be really
Speaker 3: cool to have a fifth string, because if I had
Speaker 3: a fifth string, it would actually make whole chain symmetrical
Speaker 3: because then you could have and at the very top,
Speaker 3: which means you have two oxytes. You have this one
Speaker 3: for the same note and then those are the same note.
Speaker 3: And the shapes that I'd figured out for the original
Speaker 3: four string would still work, you know, like the major
Speaker 3: shape and office of things, but you'd have the ability
Speaker 3: to access the shape from from one direction like that,
Speaker 3: and also from the bottom so every shape is is
Speaker 3: totally symmetrical. I don't know that makes sense, but you
Speaker 3: could really find yourself with with interesting kind of like that.
Speaker 3: There's an interesting openness to the to the to the
Speaker 3: fifths of the tuning. But the fourths of the tuning
Speaker 3: given now that it's two fifths.
Speaker 5: So just to be clear, it's now it's the strings
Speaker 5: are now the bass string is A, so.
Speaker 3: I not the tune down to D. So this is
Speaker 3: D A E A D. So it's like the e
Speaker 3: is like a mirror, a.
Speaker 5: Mirror, right, But the fourths on the top, the.
Speaker 3: Fourths are on the top, the fifth are on the bottom,
Speaker 3: so it's.
Speaker 5: On the bottoms. It's like a could be like a
Speaker 5: string bass yeah, yeah, for sure. And the fourth on
Speaker 5: the top mean you can still you can play Chuck
Speaker 5: Berry exactly absolutely and be are on bass player.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, absolutely. So, so there are sort of two
Speaker 3: two main vocabularies, one being a fifth thing, so you know,
Speaker 3: mandolin players, violent players, these shapes are familiar and it's
Speaker 3: easy to navigate in that way. The fourth stuff is
Speaker 3: more like it's what comes more from the sort of
Speaker 3: like LO and R and B world of the guitar.
Speaker 3: And just having you know these closer shapes makes a
Speaker 3: lot of sense. I think as a piano player, when
Speaker 3: I sit down at the piano and play, because that's
Speaker 3: really where I foundationally lived as a child, Mostly in
Speaker 3: terms of an instrument, my left hand would often play
Speaker 3: wider intervals than my right hand because the piano just
Speaker 3: sounds better like that. You know, if you play really
Speaker 3: clustery sounds in the left hand, it gets muddy, but
Speaker 3: the right hand you can be kind of as expensive
Speaker 3: as you want. Right So, I think the way the
Speaker 3: voicings were positioned, in the way that the shapes I
Speaker 3: loved worked, were that you'd have wider intervals at the
Speaker 3: bottom and smaller intervals at the top. So I think
Speaker 3: that my access point to guitar, which is less of
Speaker 3: thinking of myself as a guitar player and more of
Speaker 3: thinking myself as just someone who loves music and knows
Speaker 3: the things that I know and loves the things that
Speaker 3: I love. I think I was naturally drawn to this
Speaker 3: sense that you'd have a slightly narrower space at the
Speaker 3: top of a chord than at the bottom. It's kind
Speaker 3: of mirroring the harmonic series because the overturned series of
Speaker 3: nature that the bigger intervals are lower down, and for
Speaker 3: whatever reason, it really tickled my brain. And you know,
Speaker 3: I don't really play the guitar like guitar players necessarily do.
Speaker 3: I have a sort of quite strange and fairly unconventional technique.
Speaker 3: But one of the things I like to do is
Speaker 3: I like to sort of play with my left hand,
Speaker 3: that that's entirely my left of it. If I play
Speaker 3: one note with my right hand, that all of that
Speaker 3: vocabula comes from one comes from one hand. And I
Speaker 3: think that to me feels like something that it feels
Speaker 3: piano piano adjacent in the sense, in the sense of
Speaker 3: playing a key on the piano rather than plucking with
Speaker 3: one hand and playing with with another. And so I
Speaker 3: don't necessarily think when we call pull off, pull off,
Speaker 3: hammer ons, all that vocal, all that vocabul that I
Speaker 3: love that. And I never really got into guitar through
Speaker 3: the lens of like being a being someone who's picking liked,
Speaker 3: and I think that suff's amazing. But for me, I
Speaker 3: love playing melodies kind of essentially with both hands like
Speaker 3: I would on a piano. So I'm I'm sort of
Speaker 3: approaching the guitar a bit like a piano player. And
Speaker 3: I'm super grateful to Andy Powers, who's the actually the
Speaker 3: master builder for Tailor guitars, who is also a good
Speaker 3: friend of mine. He's the first person who I mentioned
Speaker 3: the idea too, who said, Hey, I think I can
Speaker 3: build you this guitar that's in your weird brain. Because
Speaker 3: for many years I've been playing in my imagination alone,
Speaker 3: I'd figured out the shapes for a guitar that didn't
Speaker 3: yet exist, but I knew that they would work if
Speaker 3: only I could play the guitar. And then Adie said
Speaker 3: I could build it for you. And this is the
Speaker 3: exact one that he built.
Speaker 5: This is the first one you will And you didn't
Speaker 5: try on a six string like open tunings for example.
Speaker 3: Oh, I totally did that. So my first kind of
Speaker 3: my first access point to to kind of playing the
Speaker 3: guitar at all before this guitar was created, besides the
Speaker 3: tenny guitar, was literally to rip a string off my
Speaker 3: six string guitar, I would I would remove the top
Speaker 3: string and then I tuned the top two strings of
Speaker 3: those five to the same note, and it would be
Speaker 3: like a teen guitar. And that was interesting and strange,
Speaker 3: but I think that I loved the residence of the
Speaker 3: guitar so much. I love the sort of brit the
Speaker 3: forcavery so much, and then eventually I sort of manifested
Speaker 3: this beast here.
Speaker 5: One of the songs you cover on this album is
Speaker 5: very fairy tale Lollaby by John Martin. John Martin people
Speaker 5: might be familiar with may not be, but to me,
Speaker 5: a lot of this album reminds me of that era
Speaker 5: of British folk. John Martin, Nick Drake, Richard Thompson, who's
Speaker 5: a huge favorite and he's been on the show. Were
Speaker 5: you conscious at all of those sounds when you were
Speaker 5: playing totally?
Speaker 3: I used to absolutely crush on that album London Conversation
Speaker 3: by John Martin, which is just him and the guitar
Speaker 3: and has a really interesting approach to it. He plays it, yeah,
Speaker 3: with a lot of these sort of hammerons and it's
Speaker 3: quite groovy and it's it's less kind of like strummy
Speaker 3: and more kind of a cult combination of fingerpicking and
Speaker 3: rhythm and time and little licks and things here and there.
Speaker 3: So that was that was a lot of my reference
Speaker 3: for the album, and Joni was not the huge inspiration
Speaker 3: for me, and just the way that she heard solutions
Speaker 3: through the open tuning systems and made it possible for
Speaker 3: all of us as musicians to hear the guitar in
Speaker 3: a sort of new light.
Speaker 5: But and then you played with her a year or
Speaker 5: two I did, I did.
Speaker 4: What was that like?
Speaker 3: To me? It was pretty extraordinary. You know, some people
Speaker 3: are such giants that you never even you almost don't
Speaker 3: consider that they're real people. And Jonie was someone who
Speaker 3: you know, I knew that she was having a hard
Speaker 3: time with her health a few years ago, and I
Speaker 3: sort of, I think, in my mind put her in
Speaker 3: this category of of just sort of like absolute Titanic
Speaker 3: legend who I will never even meet or encounter. And
Speaker 3: I was so overwhelmed to get to hang with her
Speaker 3: and play with her. She's she'd been hosting these joney
Speaker 3: jams is what she called them. People come around the
Speaker 3: house playing Jony tunes, other tunes and just just having fun.
Speaker 3: And so I became a part of that scene a
Speaker 3: few years ago back instead of twenty one twenty two.
Speaker 3: And then she invited me to accompany her at the
Speaker 3: Grammys I think it was last year, playing both sides now,
Speaker 3: which was a really a life highlight for me. And
Speaker 3: then I joined it at the Hollow Bowl for those
Speaker 3: two iconic nights there, which I think were the last
Speaker 3: two gigs that she played with her sort of all
Speaker 3: star band with Blake Mills and Robin Pecknold and and
Speaker 3: all sort of luminary people. Lucius were there, and god
Speaker 3: it was it was wonderful. So yeah, getting to absorb
Speaker 3: a bit of her attitude was really really interesting. And
Speaker 3: of course she's she's really punk, you know, and she's
Speaker 3: such a jazzer like she she she phrases like like
Speaker 3: like Wayne shorted us, you know, And it's it's no
Speaker 3: wonder that they were friends because the way that Wayne,
Speaker 3: she Wayne had had this sense of being so unlocked,
Speaker 3: you know, so totally anything is possible with the sort
Speaker 3: of inner logic of a child and a total connection
Speaker 3: between intuition and craft. And I think Jonie obviously came
Speaker 3: up in that in that same era. It's the same
Speaker 3: as you know, John Martin and the rest of them
Speaker 3: in the sort of late sixties as a as a
Speaker 3: folk sort of song stress. But I think her real
Speaker 3: calling was, I would say it was to be a
Speaker 3: jazz musician. And it was really really exciting to get
Speaker 3: to provoke her I would say musically and see her respond,
Speaker 3: you know, because every time she'd sing a song in
Speaker 3: rhearse flavor, it's come out totally different, which is very
Speaker 3: much like my wheelhouse. So it was fun to get
Speaker 3: to adapt my language around her creative decisions and watch
Speaker 3: her sparkle and yeah, just sort of get her to
Speaker 3: react in different ways through things I would say, and
Speaker 3: do you know it was it was a really really
Speaker 3: profound experience for me.
Speaker 2: We'll be back with more from Jacob Collier after the break.
Speaker 5: I heard a lot of Joni Mitchell early Joni Mitchell
Speaker 5: in I think a beautiful song on your album, I
Speaker 5: know a little oh, And I don't know if that
Speaker 5: was directly inspired or it just it has that flavor
Speaker 5: to me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, that's very kind of you to say. Unavoidably,
Speaker 3: I was inspired by Joni at every turn with this record. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that that's one of those songs that's very much built
Speaker 3: out of this figure. It's just a very simple figure
Speaker 3: that kind of goes round and round. And you've got
Speaker 3: card one and card four mostly. Can you imagine me
Speaker 3: Jacob Collier saying that I wrote a song with those
Speaker 3: two cools, But but Joni also had this way of
Speaker 3: writing songs with one or two chords. But then there'll
Speaker 3: be these these moments of color, these beautiful kind of
Speaker 3: explosions of sound. And in the bridge of that song,
Speaker 3: I throw a couple of other more chromatic moments in.
Speaker 3: And I think that I think Joining made that possible
Speaker 3: for all of us. I think she it was her
Speaker 3: kind of tenacity and taste that provided a sense that
Speaker 3: as a musician or as a songwriter, as a guitar player,
Speaker 3: you can you can totally go into that zone without
Speaker 3: losing the grounding of your song and without it becoming
Speaker 3: too cerebral.
Speaker 5: Can you show me the transition?
Speaker 3: Yes, I absolutely can, so if I tune so two
Speaker 3: tunings for this guitar, one being this, the other being
Speaker 3: this where you put a fifth at the top and
Speaker 3: stead of a fourth, which kind of puts you in
Speaker 3: this key, so that so this song goes at this.
Speaker 6: Mm hmm. I remember ber the field, I remember by
Speaker 6: the taste of you, A little shadows car of the sea.
Speaker 6: Suddenly I believe bela a little I rememberer the world,
Speaker 6: watching all of my walls, card a little more, leading
Speaker 6: it all for letting it gold all.
Speaker 3: I know, So that figure for the verse is really simple, right,
Speaker 3: and then took chord four and back to card one.
Speaker 3: So that's that's all one and good. And then this
Speaker 3: this kind of bridge moment.
Speaker 6: There's no just.
Speaker 3: A moment of color, moment of chromaticism, which just kind
Speaker 3: of takes you out of the reverie for a for
Speaker 3: a second, but in a sort of non disruptive way.
Speaker 3: So it just it just kind of wakes up your
Speaker 3: ear and and reminds you of the other possibilities that
Speaker 3: are close at hand around the key. But but I
Speaker 3: think that the the melody of the song. Another lesson
Speaker 3: I think I learn from jony and others is that
Speaker 3: the melody of the song grounds you in the key.
Speaker 3: That the melody doesn't doesn't doesn't kind of pander to
Speaker 3: the chromaticism. The melody just stays right where it is.
Speaker 3: It goes. So the melody is at home and there
Speaker 3: is no keep it. But the chords beneath are giving
Speaker 3: you that context that the spicyinist that sort of provides
Speaker 3: that stuff. So you know, I think of I think
Speaker 3: of jony and and all those moments where she would
Speaker 3: just throw something in that was just slightly odd or
Speaker 3: something unconventional and provide that sense of spark.
Speaker 5: You know. Now, one difference between you and Joni Mitchell
Speaker 5: is that she didn't often know what notes she was playing.
Speaker 5: She would devise these tunings and just play them. You,
Speaker 5: of course, are maybe the world's most famous music theory nerd.
Speaker 5: Maybe so when you are playing, do you know every
Speaker 5: note you're playing or so? Or do you ever have
Speaker 5: because so much of guitar playing. For example, you you
Speaker 5: you cover a James Taylor song. James Taylor has a
Speaker 5: couple of moves.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 5: This is the suspended two up to the three. It's
Speaker 5: almost all. It's a song that almost comes out of
Speaker 5: physically playing the guitar.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you wouldn't even have to know the theory just
Speaker 5: to know that. Are you always conscious of the theory
Speaker 5: when you're playing? Or sometimes does your hand just go
Speaker 5: somewhere and then maybe you figure it out later?
Speaker 3: Oh totally. I think that those are some of the
Speaker 3: most interesting moments when your hand finds the solution. I
Speaker 3: would say, despite my kind of love of musical theory,
Speaker 3: musical the kind of science behind what makes it work,
Speaker 3: I never create in a theoretical way I'm never sitting
Speaker 3: there thinking right, well, seeing I'm in the GB flat,
Speaker 3: I think that the note G sharp would be appropriate
Speaker 3: because of the relationship. I'm never thinking like that. What
Speaker 3: I know, I think, maybe similar to other guitar players,
Speaker 3: is I know I know the shapes I like, but
Speaker 3: my shapes come from off and come from instruments that
Speaker 3: aren't the guitar. So I think that you know, a
Speaker 3: move like this is something I know about emotionally, like
Speaker 3: I understand the effect that chromaticism is going to have
Speaker 3: on the harmony, but I'm not thinking of it. I
Speaker 3: could if I wanted to define it as right, or
Speaker 3: that's a sharp five move going to the thing, or
Speaker 3: it's modulation to this, but it doesn't help me as
Speaker 3: a songwriter to do so. Most of the time, I
Speaker 3: think having the command over that language helps when you're
Speaker 3: communicating to other musicians what you want. So if I'm
Speaker 3: arranging for orchestra, for example, or I'm writing something for
Speaker 3: my band to play or a group of singers to sing,
Speaker 3: and I'm able to write out the notes that I'm
Speaker 3: hearing and kind of define to them why certain notes
Speaker 3: in certain chords kind of make you feel a particular
Speaker 3: thing that's helpful for me as a band leader and
Speaker 3: as a ranger and as a producer. But I think
Speaker 3: as a songwriter, I don't speak. I'm not speaking in
Speaker 3: my own mind using that language unless I need to
Speaker 3: for any particular reason, in the same way that when
Speaker 3: I'm speaking right now, I'm not thinking, Oh, there goes
Speaker 3: the verb, and oh that's the adjective, and let's make
Speaker 3: sure the noun is at the end of the you know.
Speaker 3: But I've absorbed these kind of rules from having spoken
Speaker 3: a lot as a child and be surrounded by masters
Speaker 3: of speech as a child, you know, like the same
Speaker 3: as you. So I think with music it's the same
Speaker 3: with me. I can put that hat on if I
Speaker 3: need to, But overarching, I mostly am moving just through
Speaker 3: kind of association and feeling and thinking, Oh, I do
Speaker 3: like that as a sense, And I spent a lot
Speaker 3: of my teenage yers trying to find chords that I
Speaker 3: had no idea what they were because they excited me
Speaker 3: so much. And but then once those cars become part
Speaker 3: of your repertoire, then then your kind of repertoire grows.
Speaker 3: But I would still call it a non theoretical songwriting experience.
Speaker 5: You throw in a couple of chords in the James
Speaker 5: Taylor piece, I mentioned there's a and I tried to
Speaker 5: pick it out and I got.
Speaker 3: A flat major. I think I know the moment that
Speaker 3: it is.
Speaker 5: It like, is it a I'm going to get this wrong.
Speaker 5: Was it a tritone at that point or it's.
Speaker 3: Well, it's half of a tritone, which is a minor third,
Speaker 3: but it has a similar sense about it. It's like
Speaker 3: a like one of my favorite things to do, besides
Speaker 3: tune my own guitar, it's to do what we what
Speaker 3: we call pivoting, and pivoting is not really a musical thing.
Speaker 3: It's like a it's it's a human thing. We understand
Speaker 3: the feeling of putting your your weight or your gravity
Speaker 3: a particular point and moving your weight from one place
Speaker 3: to another. So if I take if I'm standing in
Speaker 3: one place and I stand on one foot and I
Speaker 3: pivot from that foot to standing in another place, then
Speaker 3: I've kind of guided my body through that through that
Speaker 3: experience in a controlled way. So with with with James Taylor,
Speaker 3: h I mean, this song really is one of the
Speaker 3: greatest songs of all time. The sun is slowly see.
Speaker 7: So rising.
Speaker 6: From this all around and Nashti.
Speaker 3: And I think what I did was something like, so.
Speaker 4: Closer eyes, you can close your rights.
Speaker 6: It's all right.
Speaker 8: I don't know love song es. I can't sing the
Speaker 8: booze and I can sing this song.
Speaker 4: You can sing this song when I'm gone. That was
Speaker 4: the moment somewhere else.
Speaker 3: But that note works in discord, but it also works
Speaker 3: in this chord as well, right, So that's been my pivot.
Speaker 7: You can sing this song.
Speaker 3: I could go when and or I could go when
Speaker 3: I go and then I go back to but I
Speaker 3: can sing this. So it's just a little like a
Speaker 3: window of color opens. It's like, oh, I knew world
Speaker 3: just for a moment.
Speaker 5: It's such a nice moment because it follows what makes
Speaker 5: that song distinct in the harmony, which is when it
Speaker 5: goes to the flat seven.
Speaker 3: Yes, which is such a James Taylor move.
Speaker 5: Right, But it's so beautiful in that song. And then
Speaker 5: this just took it off, and I think you do
Speaker 5: it before the solo and it.
Speaker 3: Just absolutely right.
Speaker 5: It just takes it just goes into space.
Speaker 3: You're right on the thing I love about about James
Speaker 3: Taylor is he has this way of he'll often kind
Speaker 3: of reassert his position in a key using what we
Speaker 3: call as musicians a plaguel cadence. So it's like, that's
Speaker 3: what we'll do. It's like saying, Okay, I'm an F
Speaker 3: and then I'm going to go, which kind of means
Speaker 3: it's like B flat. Fan's like, I'm really home, I'm
Speaker 3: really home.
Speaker 6: I'm really home.
Speaker 3: And he does a thing called a plague on plaguel
Speaker 3: cadence where he'll go, he'll be, he'll be in one
Speaker 3: key and then he'll go into another key, and then
Speaker 3: he'll do a play.
Speaker 6: In that key.
Speaker 3: And it's a really comforting kind of harmonic instinct that
Speaker 3: he has and I really enjoy it. But what plagueal
Speaker 3: cadences do is they move you to into the darker
Speaker 3: side of a key. It moves it and moves you
Speaker 3: into into the flat side of a key, which you're
Speaker 3: kind of going into the yeah, into the into the
Speaker 3: dark side, onto the flat side as opposed to right.
Speaker 3: That will be like the brighter side. You can go
Speaker 3: bright forever in that direction around what we call the
Speaker 3: circle of fifths, or you.
Speaker 4: Can go.
Speaker 3: Darker and darker and it gets like into the deeper
Speaker 3: news of the key. So one of the reasons why
Speaker 3: you can say this where gone is surprising is because
Speaker 3: that is a really bright chord in comparison to F anyway,
Speaker 3: but especially given the context of all the plagual cadences,
Speaker 3: which is like dark thing darkening, it's like even more
Speaker 3: of a statement to say, oh, I'm going to go here,
Speaker 3: and suddenly it's we're in this other key. I think
Speaker 3: I'm playing this now in F on the album, I
Speaker 3: think it's an F sharp, but in this context it's
Speaker 3: a D D major, which is like full full of light,
Speaker 3: you know, in comparison to to the F. But then,
Speaker 3: but then some of these other James Taylory areas are
Speaker 3: much darker. And again I can describe these things in
Speaker 3: theoretical terms, but but foundationally these are just like sensations
Speaker 3: that are familiar to me. And I think probably too
Speaker 3: many of you too, who are listen and who love
Speaker 3: listening to music, is that you have you're affected by
Speaker 3: the harmonic relationships. My kind of fascination and job as
Speaker 3: a musician and an arranger and harmonist is to try
Speaker 3: and understand the impact that some of these things can
Speaker 3: have on my songs and my choices that I can
Speaker 3: control those moments of contrast or okay, a little bit
Speaker 3: of sunlight here, or let's make some fog, or let's
Speaker 3: let's make this feel heavy, or make this feel light
Speaker 3: or and I love playing with all those sensations.
Speaker 5: It's funny you describe it as going a little dark
Speaker 5: with the with the playable cadence, because when I hear it,
Speaker 5: even in James Taylor, to me, it sounds like that's
Speaker 5: a gospel move It is very much a gospelways going.
Speaker 5: You know, if you think of the beginning of Aretha
Speaker 5: Franklin's You Make Me Feel like a Natural woman, that's piano.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And it's also I found and I'm not sure if
Speaker 5: this was deliberate or if this again comes out of
Speaker 5: playing and a guitar. A lot of drone sounds in
Speaker 5: this on this it's something you don't do as much
Speaker 5: on the piano.
Speaker 3: It's true. I think the guitar has that beautiful way
Speaker 3: of offering, like if you leave two strings going throughout
Speaker 3: your song, which I tend to do. I tend to
Speaker 3: play mostly on this guitar using the lower three strings,
Speaker 3: and these kind of just go these estate they're there
Speaker 3: so there's an automatic sense that there's a drone, which
Speaker 3: I've always loved drones so much. On the piano, it's
Speaker 3: it's harder to have these things ringing efforts. You'd have
Speaker 3: to play those notes again and again on a piano
Speaker 3: and orders to get that that same effect. But I
Speaker 3: think that the drone sense kind of grounds the sound
Speaker 3: of the guitar and being quite similar to an open
Speaker 3: tuning guitar anyway, and really being an open tuning guitar.
Speaker 3: Many people who play with open tunings, I think, also
Speaker 3: feel drones are of significance. I think Joni would be one.
Speaker 3: You know that just having having those certain notes that
Speaker 3: could keep going through the cars and other notes that
Speaker 3: change is a really beautiful way of making comonic contrast interesting.
Speaker 4: M hm.
Speaker 5: So we know a change your writing style. Did it
Speaker 5: change your singing?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I would say the thing that foundationally affected my
Speaker 3: style of singing with this album more than anything else
Speaker 3: besides just the fact that it was there was a guitar,
Speaker 3: was actually the the style of recording with these full takes,
Speaker 3: because I think that you know, if I if I
Speaker 3: record my voice as many of us do in isolation,
Speaker 3: you know, you go into the quote unquote vocal booth.
Speaker 3: Having recorded the basis of your song and you do
Speaker 3: a performance of the song, you're not necessarily at one
Speaker 3: with any of the elements in terms of of a
Speaker 3: of a performance aspect. You're you're reacting, and so you're
Speaker 3: attached in that way, but you're not you're there's there's
Speaker 3: not that sense of dualism. So so here if I
Speaker 3: if I sing and play the guitar at the same time,
Speaker 3: because I'm one person, my phrasing will move along with
Speaker 3: my instrument. My dynamics will be in line with my instrument.
Speaker 3: I will naturally kind of create a sense of conversation.
Speaker 3: You know, Son is saying, what happens is between my
Speaker 3: vocal phrases, the guitar will kind of rise up like
Speaker 3: a wave, and then it will rescind a little bit
Speaker 3: when I sing, and then it will fill in the gap.
Speaker 3: So that the dynamics I think of my singing were
Speaker 3: really inspired by and informed by the way I play
Speaker 3: the guitar, and vice versa. I think the guitar was
Speaker 3: inspired by the by the voice as well. I think
Speaker 3: in general, as a multi instrumentalist and enthusiastic of instruments
Speaker 3: in general. I think that instruments are at the best
Speaker 3: when they feel like voices in general. You know, it's
Speaker 3: no wonder that we we bend our strings, or we
Speaker 3: we we add vibrato on violins, or you know, across
Speaker 3: the gamut. That's there's the sense that instruments have a
Speaker 3: variety of ways of imitating the voice essentially. And yeah,
Speaker 3: I think as a guitar player, I can't try and
Speaker 3: play like I'm singing, even if I'm playing a chord.
Speaker 3: You can, you can kind of stroke a chord, or
Speaker 3: you can it's like you breathe, you know, it's like
Speaker 3: the way that the voice does. I think that the
Speaker 3: least interesting kind of guitar players, I know, play the
Speaker 3: guitar like it's like it's a guitar, if that makes sense.
Speaker 5: You're bringing up an interesting idea, which is modern recording
Speaker 5: now is you record everything separately, and even folk artists
Speaker 5: now I'm sure you do.
Speaker 3: A guitar is separately, yeah, isolation.
Speaker 5: But then you lose some of that interplay between the instruments.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 5: The other thing that's happened to recording is everything is
Speaker 5: now on a grid. So when you're talking about the swells.
Speaker 5: You're also changing the tempo, which is something you don't
Speaker 5: hear a lot in modern music.
Speaker 3: It's true, you know, it's such a good point you make.
Speaker 3: I take for granted that I don't play in time
Speaker 3: a lot of the time, but I think, you know,
Speaker 3: oftentimes the way our psychologies are are kind of illustrated
Speaker 3: now in terms of like a canvas or a workflow
Speaker 3: is if you look at a computer and you're running
Speaker 3: a daw audio software, you see grits constantly. There were
Speaker 3: think only two songs out of the eleven on this
Speaker 3: album that I recorded to a grid. Everything else is
Speaker 3: totally whimsical in terms of time, which I really enjoy.
Speaker 3: It's funny. I've always kind of felt comfortable going off
Speaker 3: the grid, especially with recording, and the thing that really
Speaker 3: taught me how to do it well was back in
Speaker 3: twenty sixteen when I released my debut album in My
Speaker 3: Room with the way that I funded that album and
Speaker 3: I built the campaign was through a service called Patreon.
Speaker 3: It's like one of the craphnic websites that I'm sure
Speaker 3: you know. And I decided to launch a campaign where
Speaker 3: I would harmonize my fans, harmonize my Oudence member. So
Speaker 3: I asked people to send me fifteen second snippets of
Speaker 3: any melody in any language of their choosing. Some some of
Speaker 3: them wrote new melodies, some of them sang songs I knew,
Speaker 3: and I would kind of send it back to them harmonized,
Speaker 3: and I would film myself singing the parts and I
Speaker 3: would upload them as videos, and I did about one
Speaker 3: hundred in the end, and it really it was a
Speaker 3: really fun way of building an audience online in those
Speaker 3: early days. And to me, it was like I had
Speaker 3: to get really good at harmonizing quickly because I'd received
Speaker 3: so many different submissions, and that process it was like
Speaker 3: solving Sudoku's you know. It's like someone would send melody
Speaker 3: that goes, you know, whatever the melody was, and I
Speaker 3: would I would find a solution for it harmonically that
Speaker 3: felt just like ticklish and fun and made the person
Speaker 3: sound really good. But no one was seeing young Grid,
Speaker 3: so I had to create ways of making somebody's time
Speaker 3: make sense without imposing anything on them. You know, I
Speaker 3: had melodies from like two year old kids, you know,
Speaker 3: super microtonal as I'm sure was not their intention, But
Speaker 3: there's this one girl, so she's saying, like.
Speaker 6: Tweet good, tweet, golys, you.
Speaker 3: Know, and my job is not to change anything about
Speaker 3: the melody all the time. But so I modulated around
Speaker 3: her using all these microtonal chords to make her sound incredible,
Speaker 3: you know. And it was a really fun, like philosophical
Speaker 3: musical excise for me. But I think that one of
Speaker 3: the biggest things it taught me, especially with you know,
Speaker 3: accompanying musicians would play things in time, was how you
Speaker 3: can make you can kind of make someone sound good
Speaker 3: by following their time rather than imposing any kind of grid.
Speaker 3: It wouldn't have worked if I tried to impose a grid.
Speaker 3: So weirdly, I learned a lot of lessons from that
Speaker 3: process that I applied to this album, because I think
Speaker 3: with this album, I was kind of harmonizing myself in
Speaker 3: the sense that I'd record a full length take a recording,
Speaker 3: and then I would begin the process of in so
Speaker 3: much as it was necessary, adding that context or decoration
Speaker 3: or you know, just sort of like a yeah, elements
Speaker 3: to make that performance shine. And for certain songs, like
Speaker 3: there's one song called called Icarus, which is by a
Speaker 3: group called The Stage, which I just love so much.
Speaker 3: The song that is primarily just completely me doing it live.
Speaker 3: Same with a song called Norwegian Would, which I recorded.
Speaker 3: It's fundamentally just that live performance of me playing the song.
Speaker 3: And then other songs like the Beach Boys, Keeping on Summer,
Speaker 3: some of my own songs like Heaven Butterflies, and I
Speaker 3: know a little some of these things have a little
Speaker 3: bit more of that layering effect. But I love the
Speaker 3: challenge of following something that feels natural and organic and
Speaker 3: alive without trying to. In music, we say the world
Speaker 3: quantize it, you know, so of lock it to a grid,
Speaker 3: make it rigid in terms of rhythm, but all some
Speaker 3: terms of tuning. In terms of sound, I love all
Speaker 3: that sqriggly imperfection.
Speaker 5: Norwegian wood is interesting because because there's always a debate
Speaker 5: about whether Norwegian woods in three four times or six eight?
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And you do something. First of all, you're making
Speaker 5: a sound that sounds like you're you're striking above the net.
Speaker 3: Is that true?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: This thing I did do that. Okay, So I a
Speaker 3: little fire, that's one thing. But that rhythm rhythm for that, yeah, again,
Speaker 3: it's that drone thing. And I love I love the
Speaker 3: palmuting sound in general, but what you're hearing a lot
Speaker 3: is me hammering on with my left hand and these
Speaker 3: little baby kind of like strings. And I love it
Speaker 3: because it feels, again, it doesn't feel like a guitar.
Speaker 3: It doesn't feel like I'm hey, you know, I'm not.
Speaker 4: It's like.
Speaker 3: It's like partly percussion, partly partly drum, partly kind of drone,
Speaker 3: and it's there's something almost like like a climber about it,
Speaker 3: like some piano about it's really kind of groovy.
Speaker 5: It sounds a little and I know it's not. It
Speaker 5: sounds a little busting over almost.
Speaker 3: Yes, the first part somewhat yeah, somewhat yeah.
Speaker 5: But then the chorus you're just playing, yeah.
Speaker 3: That's more.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But I love how I mean. One of the things
Speaker 3: about this guitar I love is that it has a
Speaker 3: six string neck but only five strings, so there's much
Speaker 3: more space between the strings to just kind of find
Speaker 3: these sounds. And somehow it's it's it's it's like an
Speaker 3: an appealing system for me to to find these these
Speaker 3: kind of ticklish, little little pockets. In this song. I
Speaker 3: also bend do a lot of string bending, which again
Speaker 3: is possible because of the space between the strings, but
Speaker 3: you know. Yeah, for this particular song, the time is
Speaker 3: constantly shifting slightly because it's all live. But I focused
Speaker 3: on the fact that this was just me doing a
Speaker 3: take and singing the song, and only the very last
Speaker 3: minute that I had a couple of little moments of
Speaker 3: decoration here and there.
Speaker 2: Well, LA's break and we'll be back with Jacob Collier.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 5: Probably the most produced song is your Beach Boy cover
Speaker 5: of keep an Eye in Summer. Yeah, not their best
Speaker 5: known song, No tremendous song.
Speaker 3: I love that song.
Speaker 5: What inspired you to do that song?
Speaker 3: You know? This was one of the things that I
Speaker 3: had before the four day window began. I'd recorded a
Speaker 3: rendition of this song summer of twenty twenty four. She
Speaker 3: was on Midsummer's Day and it was one of those
Speaker 3: rare days that I'm sure many of you will know,
Speaker 3: where you you know, your life's been full, and you've
Speaker 3: been busy and things have been going on, but you
Speaker 3: just find yourself at the weekend home, you got half
Speaker 3: the noon ahead of it. You think, oh, what should
Speaker 3: I do? I've just I found myself, you know, a
Speaker 3: Lauren to myself, and so I thought, well, maybe I
Speaker 3: should just record keep an arm Summer because it was
Speaker 3: a song I've been sort of jamming on for a
Speaker 3: bit and playing, and I just got my my ten
Speaker 3: string guitar, which was a brand new kind of angle
Speaker 3: on the fire string. It's just the twelve string equivalent
Speaker 3: of the fire string. And so I sat down and
Speaker 3: I took me about three four hours and I recorded
Speaker 3: this quite scrappy arrangement of it with all these different
Speaker 3: layers and things, and that that arrangement of the song
Speaker 3: existing actually was quite a big part of the inspirations
Speaker 3: to make this album at all, because I when I
Speaker 3: sat down in May to do this record, I thought, well,
Speaker 3: what do I have that I could work with it?
Speaker 3: It's like, well, I have that arrangement of keeping on Summer,
Speaker 3: maybe I could build a whole record around that world,
Speaker 3: because it it's a musical world I really love, and
Speaker 3: a sort of sonority of a particular area of my
Speaker 3: taste that I've really wanted to explore and go deep
Speaker 3: intofferent ages and sorry, what is that?
Speaker 1: What is that a that you liked?
Speaker 3: I think it's a combination of the sound of the
Speaker 3: guitar mixed with a sort of stripped back approach. There's
Speaker 3: also with Keeping On Summer. A microphone that I use
Speaker 3: called an R a T eight ribbon mic which has
Speaker 3: that really nice hiss like to everything, so when you
Speaker 3: record something on it, it feels really kind of feels analog,
Speaker 3: feels a life, feels like warm and rich. So there's
Speaker 3: something about that, the word that which is part a
Speaker 3: big part of this world, which for me made a
Speaker 3: big impact, and I used it on Keeping on Summer.
Speaker 3: It's one of the first times I'd ever recorded using it,
Speaker 3: and so I got really excited by this hissy warm world.
Speaker 3: I'd explored it a little bit with Jesse Volume two
Speaker 3: back in the day, but yeah, there's there's something about
Speaker 3: the the acoustic guitar meets vocal harmony world that inspired me.
Speaker 3: And obviously the king of vocal harmony and songwriting to
Speaker 3: me is Brian has always been Brian. So to cover
Speaker 3: that song Keeping On Summer felt like a really nice
Speaker 3: sort of homage to the great man. And we obviously
Speaker 3: lost Brian this year, so it just like I renae
Speaker 3: to share that arrangement with the world as just a
Speaker 3: sort of really warm, sunlit, gladeful afternoon in England, thinking oh,
Speaker 3: maybe I can do a rendition of the song that
Speaker 3: I really love and yes, not not one of his
Speaker 3: big hits, but a beautiful modulation in that in that
Speaker 3: bridge there.
Speaker 5: M h, absolutely it goes up. I can't remember the chords.
Speaker 3: Exactly, major third or something on my third.
Speaker 5: Did you get a chance to meet him?
Speaker 3: Sorry, I never did get a chance to me, Brian,
Speaker 3: and he, like Joni, was one of these people who
Speaker 3: sits in a total on a throne in my head,
Speaker 3: someone who like I never felt the need to to
Speaker 3: meet him for any I have enough of a feast
Speaker 3: of inspiration just from his work. But I did see
Speaker 3: him play once and it was it was unbelievable funny.
Speaker 5: When you talk about this album, it was about restricting choices,
Speaker 5: or at least putting some of your palette away, which
Speaker 5: is you know, famously, he's the guy that was almost
Speaker 5: driven crazy by the number of choices he could make it.
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly. I mean, here's a guy who embraced the
Speaker 3: fireman's bells and the timpany and the swanny whistle and
Speaker 3: the and the there men, of course, and it's it's
Speaker 3: to me. It gave me so much permission as a
Speaker 3: kid to play and to explore these big words, but
Speaker 3: I also love that. I think it's a bootleg album
Speaker 3: that Brian put out or was put out of just
Speaker 3: Brian playing songs on the piano. It might be called
Speaker 3: like Brian at the Piano or something like that, and
Speaker 3: he just plays these songs at the piano, and you
Speaker 3: recognize with Brian how strong the songs are, because when
Speaker 3: you take away all the swanny whistles and the craziness
Speaker 3: of the sandwich I love so much, you're left with
Speaker 3: a really beautiful song. And so yeah, for me, that
Speaker 3: was so inspiring and still so inspiring to me as
Speaker 3: a as a Songwriter's like, how can you make something
Speaker 3: that both works in a totally acoustic strip back scenario
Speaker 3: and also works when you scale all those layers on
Speaker 3: top of other layers, and you know, you have a
Speaker 3: song like good Vibrations, which I think I look back
Speaker 3: at that at the first time I heard that song
Speaker 3: and it was just like the whole, this whole new
Speaker 3: faction of creativity became available to me. It's like I
Speaker 3: didn't I just didn't know you could do that. But
Speaker 3: when Brian saits to the piano plays the song, it
Speaker 3: sounds great too, you know, and That's why I love
Speaker 3: about Brian and love about those songs.
Speaker 5: I want to talk about a couple more of your influences,
Speaker 5: how they may or may not have found their way
Speaker 5: into this album.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you grew up in a musical.
Speaker 5: Family, and you said you sang bar corrals.
Speaker 3: I did what we did. Did you sing by the way, Well,
Speaker 3: I was the bass, so I would and i'd often
Speaker 3: I'd often add notes in or imparize things around those,
Speaker 3: around those those things. I always have to have a
Speaker 3: pencil handy and would be, you know, jotting notes in
Speaker 3: and things, just like learning what I liked and what
Speaker 3: I and what I responded to. But yeah, so I
Speaker 3: was brought up by a single mom. I'm the eldest
Speaker 3: of three kids. So we were s a TV, you know,
Speaker 3: and my mum sings ten that kind of Shekina goes
Speaker 3: ah and he kind of comes out with these tenor lines.
Speaker 3: But I really loved I love that feeling. I still
Speaker 3: love that feeling now of sitting with those those lovely
Speaker 3: people and just singing together. And actually is what Brian
Speaker 3: used to do too, used to sing with his brothers.
Speaker 3: He used to transcribe four Freshman arrangements and they'd sing
Speaker 3: it all together as a group. And I think he
Speaker 3: did a lot of his process of studying and expanding
Speaker 3: his kind of harmonic palette through learning these arrangements and
Speaker 3: teaching these parts to his brothers. And I love the
Speaker 3: thought that, yeah, he did that and then went on
Speaker 3: to write songs like you know, Surfer Girl or whatever,
Speaker 3: and outcome all these four freshman voice things. But in
Speaker 3: the context of a surf rock song, it's amazing.
Speaker 5: Now are there points where we're hearing a little Bak
Speaker 5: in any of the songs on this album?
Speaker 3: It's a good question. I find him unavoidably inspiring, and
Speaker 3: he shows up in all sorts of places. I think
Speaker 3: there are certain moments. There's a song called Where Did
Speaker 3: My Apple Fall on the album, which is really it's
Speaker 3: quite an austere to. It's quite a strange song. I
Speaker 3: really love it a lot. One of the songs one
Speaker 3: of those song seeds that I had that I didn't
Speaker 3: know what to do with that because it didn't feel
Speaker 3: like it fit on any of the Jesse albums, and
Speaker 3: it didn't really have it a world that where it belonged,
Speaker 3: and I was so excited to get to release it,
Speaker 3: but it's quite it's amos quite classic in terms of
Speaker 3: the harmony, this three part harmony that that moves I
Speaker 3: think in a way that hopefully Bark may may approve of.
Speaker 3: There's another song on the album called tom Thumb, which
Speaker 3: is which is a similar thing, and so it goes
Speaker 3: Tom Thumb.
Speaker 4: Goes, light up the stove of your countenance. You're all
Speaker 4: that matters to me.
Speaker 6: I am a lake or a stone or an hour glass.
Speaker 6: I am a joke that is wasted on.
Speaker 7: Grab me and stoves of your confidence.
Speaker 3: Render me to tatters.
Speaker 6: I'm free.
Speaker 4: I'll be a.
Speaker 6: Steak or a bone or an oven glove. I'll be
Speaker 6: the island the drowns in the sea talm thong, Where
Speaker 6: did you come from?
Speaker 4: The last soft drown and everything tall thought you were gone?
Speaker 6: The found inside everything.
Speaker 3: Oh that's the whole song. Miss that's very short for this.
Speaker 1: What is it?
Speaker 3: It's very classical and I love I love that influence
Speaker 3: showing up in songs. You can't plan what inspires you,
Speaker 3: and when you sit down to write a song, you
Speaker 3: just your job is to make space for whatever wants
Speaker 3: to sort of come through. But I think having loved
Speaker 3: that music for so long, as a kid. It's it's
Speaker 3: always a surprise and delight but also unsurprising to me
Speaker 3: to see certain sort of tragic things make their way
Speaker 3: into songs, And I think, yeah, a progression like that
Speaker 3: wouldn't exist if it wasn't for that that that influence.
Speaker 3: So I definitely didn't learn the bulk of my my
Speaker 3: harmonic understanding or my songwriter style through any kind of
Speaker 3: jazz harmony. I think I was most inspired and informed
Speaker 3: by some of the more expensive classical harmony that I
Speaker 3: loved as as a child, and hearing that find its
Speaker 3: way into into songs to me that that's that's always
Speaker 3: a sign that I'm tapped into something real.
Speaker 5: Here's a trickier one. Benjamin brittin You Love.
Speaker 3: I adore.
Speaker 5: Any little any little bits of Benjamin Britain in here, I.
Speaker 3: Would definitely say so. I think those two songs feel
Speaker 3: again feel britain Esque in to to the to the
Speaker 3: point that they are austere. I think of Britain as
Speaker 3: the master of the austere harmonically, like he he kind
Speaker 3: of plays what's not the chord rather than just what
Speaker 3: is the chord. He will leave out a really important
Speaker 3: note in a chord and make you feel like you're
Speaker 3: like you have to imagine the note instead, you know.
Speaker 5: Well, he often inverted chords in the in the base,
Speaker 5: you'd have a fifth, you'd have.
Speaker 3: A fifth, or a third, or even a seventh or sixth.
Speaker 3: That it really had a had a very bold imagination
Speaker 3: for kind of leaving space in chords and leaving austerity
Speaker 3: within chords. I think Britain to me, it's hard to
Speaker 3: point to a particular moment where it's like, oh, there's
Speaker 3: there's Britain. But I think that the attitude of of
Speaker 3: a harmonic language that can be yeah, both very warm
Speaker 3: and reassuring and also austere and rather unpredictable. I think
Speaker 3: that there's an essence of that which he he was
Speaker 3: like one of the funding fathers for me as a child,
Speaker 3: of being harmonically unpredictable in ways that are just disarming,
Speaker 3: like not just fully fledged and radically dense, but just
Speaker 3: surprising in these gaunt ways.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I was watching a video you made. I'm not
Speaker 5: sure how many years ago you were on Lodger, just
Speaker 5: showing people how you create vocal effects over I think
Speaker 5: he used maybe Hay Jude. I can't I can't remember
Speaker 5: his Hay Jude or sure or something like that. And
Speaker 5: you were just showing people and you were you were
Speaker 5: talking about doing this, and this is how you created
Speaker 5: I think this is where I got your description of
Speaker 5: decoration over top of the melody, and how impatient you
Speaker 5: are to get yes yes to that part. I'm glad
Speaker 5: you've learned patience. But you said something that really struck me.
Speaker 5: You said, and you were speaking very fast, and you said,
Speaker 5: you know, this takes a lot of practice, and then
Speaker 5: you pause and you said and it takes a lot
Speaker 5: of courage and trust. And those two last words really
Speaker 5: interested me because not only I mean, I've dealt with
Speaker 5: writers my whole life. I'm an editor. That's something so
Speaker 5: many people lack courage and trust. And even musicians we
Speaker 5: have in here sometimes who've have great accomplishments and are
Speaker 5: sitting here at some point in their career, don't have
Speaker 5: that faith in their own work at that moment. I'm
Speaker 5: interested where you get that.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's a beautiful question. I think of all the
Speaker 3: most important things in music, I don't think there musical things.
Speaker 3: I think that human things. I think courage and trust
Speaker 3: are too to the central pillars that are somewhat necessary
Speaker 3: to make a thing a tool. It makes something interesting
Speaker 3: to me. It's hard to say where where these things
Speaker 3: come from. I think everyone needs a champion in different ways,
Speaker 3: in different parts of their journey. Everyone needs a person
Speaker 3: to reflect them back at themselves in a certain way,
Speaker 3: in some form and say, hey, this thing that you
Speaker 3: are doing is interesting to me. I can think of
Speaker 3: people along my journey, whether it's my mother, whether it's
Speaker 3: Quincy Jones or Herbie Hancock, or just peers of mine,
Speaker 3: friends of mine who notice something about what I'm doing
Speaker 3: in a moment where I don't have that trust and
Speaker 3: belief and say you Ruin as this is special, you
Speaker 3: should keep doing that. And I say, oh, really, are
Speaker 3: you sure? And they say yeah, And there's something about
Speaker 3: that exchanged that reflection, which I think it really helped
Speaker 3: me out along my way. I don't know where my
Speaker 3: audacity comes from quite It probably comes partly from from
Speaker 3: my mom, it comes partly from my heroes, people I've
Speaker 3: loved over the years. I think I've always possessed a
Speaker 3: sort of dogged belief that something is possible, even if
Speaker 3: it's totally not possible, you know, for example, going to
Speaker 3: a key that doesn't exist. You know, these kinds of
Speaker 3: things that I've done in the past. You know, the
Speaker 3: piano is limited to twelve notes. I've written songs and
Speaker 3: keys that are beyond those twelve notes. And the only
Speaker 3: real reason I've done it is because I'm just too
Speaker 3: interested not to give it a try. I think that
Speaker 3: every time you take a risk and something interesting happens,
Speaker 3: you get a little bit of confidence out of that.
Speaker 3: I think about being on stage over the years, and
Speaker 3: you know, when I first stepped onto a stage, I
Speaker 3: you know, I was it was really it's really scary
Speaker 3: thing to do. You know, you stand in front of
Speaker 3: a thousand people, or five thousand people, or a hundred people,
Speaker 3: wherever it is, and you tell your story and everyone's watching,
Speaker 3: and if you're not used to that as a format,
Speaker 3: it's it's a really strange thing to do. It's a
Speaker 3: strange thing to subject yourself to. But what I found
Speaker 3: is every time I'd take a risk and I'd get
Speaker 3: a little bit of that reward back, I would I'd
Speaker 3: gain a little bit more courage for next time. And
Speaker 3: I think that as one thing went to another, both
Speaker 3: in the studio and out of the studio I really enjoyed.
Speaker 3: Just you just have to try stuff out. And you know,
Speaker 3: the worst thing that can happen in music is that
Speaker 3: you do something that's just not great. And we've all
Speaker 3: we've all made things that aren't great, you know. And
Speaker 3: I think, I think when I'm at my best, when
Speaker 3: I'm at my most open and free flowing, I'm I'm
Speaker 3: totally willing to to just let go and see what
Speaker 3: comes out. And I also know the feeling of of
Speaker 3: I think, is it all artis who have really doubting,
Speaker 3: of really doubting the thing I'm making? You know, basically
Speaker 3: every single thing I make, At a certain point, I'll
Speaker 3: be like, oh, I don't know about this. I don't know,
Speaker 3: is this really worth completing? It doesn't feel like it
Speaker 3: tells the whole story, or it feels like it tells
Speaker 3: too much of the story, or you know, is this
Speaker 3: interesting enough? I think it is something I've often come
Speaker 3: up against myself, or or is this is this too much?
Speaker 3: You know? Have I have I gone too far? There
Speaker 3: aren't really any guidelines around this stuff, Like, there are
Speaker 3: people whose taste we can align with, but but ultimately,
Speaker 3: as an artist, you have to find those lines for yourself.
Speaker 3: I think I've I have deliberately put myself in situations
Speaker 3: creatively where I out well be uncomfortable and I won't
Speaker 3: know what's going to happen next, and I have to
Speaker 3: find a solution. I think about collaborations like that too.
Speaker 3: I've I've been in the room with musicians who I
Speaker 3: respect greatly and who I've been trying to build some
Speaker 3: kind of musical bridge with, and you know, sometimes it
Speaker 3: works and sometimes it doesn't, but there's always an interesting
Speaker 3: lesson to learn. I think that I think that trust
Speaker 3: comes from not being afraid to make a mistake. I
Speaker 3: think that there's nothing that prevents creativity more effectively than
Speaker 3: the fear of making a mistake. That's that's the ultimate
Speaker 3: death nail for you being opened and you being you know,
Speaker 3: And I experienced this all the time, and I think
Speaker 3: my job as an artist is to keep on maintaining
Speaker 3: those strategies that flip you out of those kind of
Speaker 3: fear directions and think, well, you know, I can take
Speaker 3: confidence in my in my risk going through this challenge.
Speaker 3: And at this point I've done so many kind of
Speaker 3: unruly things musically that I do have a sense of
Speaker 3: faith in myself.
Speaker 5: People don't talk a lot about your lyrics, mainly because
Speaker 5: I think you're known so much for your incredible music vocabulary.
Speaker 5: Has your lyric writing.
Speaker 3: Changed, Yes, it has, I think in a sense, I
Speaker 3: still feel like I'm learning the ropes. I'm someone who
Speaker 3: loves words and description and language equally as much as
Speaker 3: I love music. I could happily talk about my experience
Speaker 3: of the world in as much length as I play
Speaker 3: about my experience of the world. The two worlds have
Speaker 3: existed somewhat separately for me for a lot of my life,
Speaker 3: Like I because the music that I've created in the
Speaker 3: past contains so much kind of depth and contour and color.
Speaker 3: My sense over the years has often been to not
Speaker 3: try to make the lyrics too too much either, because
Speaker 3: otherwise it's just too much information. So sometimes my lyrics
Speaker 3: have been relatively simple in comparison to the music. But
Speaker 3: as someone who just loves the whole spirit of language
Speaker 3: within poetry and words and resonance and the mind that
Speaker 3: it's something that I think I'm with this album. I
Speaker 3: think there's a particular element of that being explored. I knew,
Speaker 3: but I'm always curious how those two worlds can converge,
Speaker 3: and I've always blown away when a songwriter can do
Speaker 3: both things really well. Well.
Speaker 5: Let me give you an example, and it's the last
Speaker 5: song on your album, which is very different, and after
Speaker 5: a beautiful album, it comes as such a surprise. The
Speaker 5: lyrics are quite different, the piano treatment is quite simple,
Speaker 5: and you use your voice in a way that I
Speaker 5: had never really heard before. Can you tell me a
Speaker 5: bit about that song?
Speaker 7: I can.
Speaker 9: So.
Speaker 3: The song's called something Heavy, and it's another one of
Speaker 3: these songs that I had before the album. I didn't
Speaker 3: know what to do with that song. It felt like
Speaker 3: it came from a totally different place from other songs.
Speaker 3: But I love that figure. I can play film the
Speaker 3: piano right now. It's just something I found myself one
Speaker 3: day really.
Speaker 7: Enjoying.
Speaker 3: As I suppose, Okay, there's a song that needs to
Speaker 3: be written here in some way, you know, And so
Speaker 3: I I started to sing a melody, and as I went,
Speaker 3: some things came out. So I was saying, I've been
Speaker 3: holding something, something kind of heavy.
Speaker 6: And then I had this gong.
Speaker 4: Doorded it on on.
Speaker 3: I really like that melody, and so I worked it
Speaker 3: through and I figured that it might be fun to say.
Speaker 6: So let go.
Speaker 3: Now, let it go now, and the end of holding
Speaker 3: something heavy, so so so let it go now. It's
Speaker 3: like a song from from an ancestor or something, and
Speaker 3: we all know the feeling of holding something for a
Speaker 3: really really long time and finally realizing I gotta I
Speaker 3: gotta put this down, I gotta let this go. This
Speaker 3: isn't serving me anymore, this is this is something big,
Speaker 3: and I don't need it. And there's there's a sense
Speaker 3: of relief about that exchange, that handoff, and there's a
Speaker 3: sense of grief about that handoff as well. I think that,
Speaker 3: you know, it's one of those songs that just kind
Speaker 3: of came it wrote itself a little bit. You know.
Speaker 3: It's like the figure was there and I became kind
Speaker 3: of really attached to it, and that the melody was clear,
Speaker 3: the chorus, I know.
Speaker 7: It's time to let it go.
Speaker 3: I knew that's how we should and so I just,
Speaker 3: you know, I sang it until the lyrics came through.
Speaker 9: And every time I feel a weird upon me, you
Speaker 9: hold a line to keep it onside normal life.
Speaker 7: You've been holding on beside me, and it's down to
Speaker 7: let it go.
Speaker 6: Let it go.
Speaker 3: So the song kind of came from from there. One
Speaker 3: thing I found on tour that I really love to
Speaker 3: do is belt, like use my chest voice and belt
Speaker 3: really loud. And I this album is such a softly
Speaker 3: spoken album, and I enjoyed the idea that at the
Speaker 3: very last minute I would really sing out. And so
Speaker 3: the second chorus, the second chorus of the song goes,
Speaker 3: and every time I build a wall around me, but
Speaker 3: I belt it loud.
Speaker 6: I'm like, every time.
Speaker 4: I bid walll around me, you hor alte to pull
Speaker 4: me back love.
Speaker 6: In all this time, you never start thinking of me,
Speaker 6: but it turns letting now.
Speaker 3: And that kind of catharsis was something I think the
Speaker 3: album needed. It's it's funny, it's all this all this
Speaker 3: kind of softness and consideration and warmth, and and it
Speaker 3: needed a burst, It needed a burst open. But I
Speaker 3: didn't write this song for this album. I wrote the
Speaker 3: song on its own right and realized, oh, actually this
Speaker 3: could totally work for this, for this record. And yeah,
Speaker 3: the style of songwriting and the start of note writing
Speaker 3: came from a kind of a different place, but it
Speaker 3: was a refreshing challenge to write from that perspective. Is
Speaker 3: right from a figure or an instrument. I think the
Speaker 3: way it was related to the rest of the album
Speaker 3: is that it came from my relationship with one figure
Speaker 3: on one instrument, and that kind of solo instrument approach
Speaker 3: was different from other songs I've written that begin as
Speaker 3: kind of sonic world, sonic environments or moods, and then
Speaker 3: that is what birthed the lyrics. But yeah, this just
Speaker 3: felt like a good old fashioned song.
Speaker 5: You know, thank you so much for coming in, yes,
Speaker 5: and just wonderful.
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me all right, it was great.
Speaker 2: In the episode description, you'll find a linked to Jacob
Speaker 2: car Year's latest album, The Light for Days, as well
Speaker 2: as a collection of his past releases. Be sure to
Speaker 2: check out YouTube dot com slash Broken Record podcast to
Speaker 2: see all of our video interviews, and be sure to
Speaker 2: follow us on Instagram at the Broken Record pot. You
Speaker 2: can follow on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is
Speaker 2: produced and edited by Leah Rose, with marketing help from
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Speaker 6: I'm justin Richmond.