I feel like an album is always – for any artist – just a marker, a timestamp of when it was created, and while I only really recorded it in 2023 (though some of it was demoed in 2020), a lot has changed for me in the three years since my previous album ‘Cannot Be, Whatsoever’ was released, especially in 2023. The record speaks of my recognising what needs to change in my life, from my location, my feelings towards making music, the nature of my relationships and such
I made the decision to leave Cardiff, where I’d been living for fourteen years, around the time I finished recording my last album, ‘Cannot Be, Whatsoever’, in the early days of the pandemic, and the romance of having to climb over a drum kit and piano to get to the sofa in my instrument-cluttered former coach house wore off once I had nothing I wanted to record. I found a converted 1800s barn in the Welsh countryside, with a plot of land and stables, and set about tearing the stables down with my Dad to build a studio
The move out of the city and into the countryside reflects the environment I grew up in. My Dad had a studio next to our house when I was a child, a renovated stone barn in the remote countryside. As we get older I suppose many of us see our lives paralleling those of our parents in some ways, and this move for me felt a significant and meaningful one
There’s a line in one of the new songs: “my legs won’t go where my head wants”
I guess they finally did
