“Writing can be simultaneously the hardest, most infuriating and the easiest thing in the world,” declares the Auckland-raised / London-based songwriter Ezra Vine when quizzed about the initial inspiration behind his growing body of work. “Once a real idea finds its way into your head, it takes on its own life and almost begins to force its own way into being. It will linger and gnaw on my mind until it's done.”
God moves in mystery ways, and His intrusion upon young Vine’s life was unorthodox. Raised on his parents’ record collection – Hendrix, The Beatles, Tchaikovsky – Vine first started playing guitar at the age of thirteen, his admittedly terrible teenage grunge band influenced by Nirvana and Foo Fighters, the lineage of which he traced back to guitar’s own God Eric Clapton and Cream.
Vine battled against the grain to maintain his journey. Studying music didn’t suit him, he admits, quoting Telamon of Arcadia: “It’s one thing to study war and another to live the warrior’s life.” In terms of a young musician’s experience, that translates as there being “a self-imposed barrier because you value the outcome of your work far too highly, to the point that it defines you.”
Prompted in part by his brother’s advice, Vine learned to let go of his perfectionism in order to allow his songs to take their own flight outside of the confines of his home studio, a trait that developed by subsequent work as a musician for hire – sessions, adverts and anything else that helped to pay his rent. The versatility of his musicianship allows him to play almost every instrument that you might find in a conventional band – from the piano, which he learned during a self-taught ten-hour-a-day / three-month-long education that was initiated by a love of Rachmaninov and Chopin, to percussion which can be as simple as “banging my desk or a doorframe.”
Cut to the summer of 2012. Encouraged by the positive reaction greeted to a collection of instrumentals which he recorded at home with his usual method of layering track-upon-track-upon-track, Vine spent an industrious fortnight building them into fully-fledged songs packed with his narrative, mythological lyrical style. His new songs represented a new beginning with a new style; the conclusion of his artistic gestation. But two weeks later, everything changed in a moment.
Vine appeared in a music video for his friend’s band, which involved him riding a horse. It was uneventful until the ill-fated final shot. “We were cantering along the side of a river in a forest,” he recalls. “The horse spooked and it just bolted. It dug its front hooves in and flipped me off. I landed on my head and snapped my neck.”
Vine’s neck was broken at the C6 segment. 97% of people who suffer this type of injury will suffer spinal cord damage or even death. He admits to being lucky, but his injuries were severe. He spent three months completely immobilised in a neck and body brace. In the months that followed, he remained heavily concussed and weak with fatigue. His understandably tumultuous emotions were heightening by lurking insomnia. As Vine’s recovery progressed at a torturously slow pace, plans to release the recordings were put on hold.
Nine month after the accident, an EP was finally issued with the focus falling on lead track Celeste, an upbeat, summer haze of a song which became one of the biggest airplay hits of the year. Not that Vine could appreciate the moment due to the continuing effects of his injury. He attributes part of his eventual recovery process to the excitement of writing new material and growing international attention following his domestic success. That interest would later result in Vine signing to Parlophone in May 2014.
Vine’s first release for the label, the upcoming Celeste EP, was again recorded at his home studio and then embellished during an intense six-day period with producer Cam Blackwood (London Grammar, Florence + The Machine). It echoes the literate musicality of many of his favourite artists: the poems of Leonard Cohen, early Shins records, and The National.
He Won’t Knock affirms Vine’s journalistic lyrical style in which story and character is prominent. It’s a true story about an apparently “fine, upstanding citizen” who masked the fact that he had conned people out of millions of dollars. After the Serious Fraud Office commenced prosecution proceedings, he died of a heart attack. “It’s a retrospective song of warning and it was very cathartic to write,” he explains, adding that its sinister “thin man” acts as a dual allegory for the SFO and the Angel of Death.
The EP also features an intimate version of Marrow, which reflects the mental images which remain from Vine’s recovery. Yet while this collection leans towards the reflective, Vine’s other songs cover the range of the sonic spectrum. The full version of Marrow is a strident anthem underpinned by the analogue sound of the Omnichord. Another standout is Strange Tides which progressively escalates its percussion before bursting into a wall of feedback. At the other extreme, What You’re Made Of is almost entirely constructed around an inventive orchestra of synths.
Born from the soul of their creator, these are songs which unite instinct and intellect. What once lingered and gnawed on Ezra Vine’s mind will now do likewise with a fresh new audience.
