STACK #150 Apr 2017

2 1

songs. I also think I’ve matured quite a lot as a songwriter and musician. When I was younger, the easy songs to write were the sadder songs. Also, they kind of gave me a sort of therapy. There are still very quiet moments in this album - there’s a song which is just one take of me and a guitar. There’s a song at the end of the album, just me and a piano. There are still very intimate moments, but you’re right, I think it’s just the way it happened. The imagery within your lyrics is striking, specifically in Deep TheWate r with “When your hair spills light on my shoulders” and in Little Light , “I was longing for the rain, you were the flood that made me overflow.” Does it take you a while to get them the way you would like them to be? The lyrics are extremely important to me, so it’s great that you’ve picked up on that. Yeah, they take me a long time to write. I want to get them right. And hopefully I’ll be singing these songs for the rest of my life, and so [I want to] always live in that moment. It takes me much longer to write the songs, but I think that’s a much better payoff at the end. How did the idea for your 360 music video for Little Light come about? I’d done a show in London earlier in the year with the band, and this company [called Melody VR] approached us and said they’d really like to record the gig in virtual reality, and have people be able to plug in and be in the middle of the crowd, and be on stage, with their headsets... [It was] something I just found extremely interesting. It worked out they found it would be easier if we were in [an] open space with natural light, so my manager [...] found this place in East London. We all got up on this roof and played the track through to a kind of futuristic camera, and it came out really well. Why was that specific roof chosen when it seemed like there were a lot of pallets and planks of wood lying around - was it in construction?

It was being refurbed at the time, but I really liked that look of it being quite derelict, and not pristine. Actually, it’s funny, the guys working on it had said we couldn’t walk past a certain line because we’d just fall through the roof and die, really. So we set up far away from that and just played the song. But yeah, it just had a good look. It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t pristine. That was something that excited me. You had over 90 songs when you went to write The Morning .Was it a similar situation with midnight ? I think there were 95 songs. Yeah, they certainly weren’t all album material. My manager and myself have a songwriting folder where all of the songs are, and we just kind of looked through that and made sure there weren’t any songs that were getting overlooked. There are a lot of demos to pick from. On this trip to Sydney we were looking through the folder again and listening to demos, and [we’ve] picked a few already for the next album. It’s a good problem to have, too many songs. You’re known for your stripped-back, acoustic versions of songs, especially on some of your older YouTube clips. How do you bring that style to live shows whilst still giving an energetic performance? When we do a live show with the band, I’ll take a third of the gig and do

it by myself and play the more intimate songs. I like to get into the crowd a lot, and play and have them sing along and get them involved. The bigger songs are very personal to me and I feel like I get quite self-indulgent on stage, which I don’t think is a bad thing. I just reach inside and sing new songs, and hopefully that comes across. Being a punter at my show... it’s something I’ll never be able to go through. I think even with the bigger-sounding songs, it’s still very close and very personal. Whenever I go to a gig, that’s what I’m after. I can [get a] snapshot of how that artist is feeling, and the array of their emotions. That’s what I try and replicate for people coming to my gig.

midnight is out now via Cooking Vinyl.

Lewis Watson is touring the land Down Under in June on the following dates; 15th Jun @ The Factory Theatre, Sydney 16th Jun @ The Triffid, Brisbane 17th Jun @ The Evelyn Hotel, Melbourne (18+) 18th Jun @ The Evelyn Hotel, Melbourne

21st Jun @ Fowlers Live, Adelaide 22nd Jun @ Astor Theatre, Perth

stack.net.au