Jeremy Tuplin - New colors for English songwriting

Hi Gianfranco, it's really great to talk to you after meeting you in Avellino just over a year ago. But yes, with the new album out just a few months now, I'd say things are going well on the musical side.

I recall that in one of your first interviews after the release of "I Dreamt I Was An Austronaut" you stated: "I tend to get bored quite quickly, I like to think I wouldn't make music if I weren't trying to offer something new and different". I have to say, listening to the three albums you've released so far, you've stayed true to that statement. 

That sounds like something I must have said. I still agree with that statement and, thinking back on the last three albums, they've all had a certain character, different in their own way. It's good to hear that you agree. What I'm working on right now will, hopefully, continue along that line.

 

You're an eclectic musician and a keen listener of your peers' work – among your past influences you've mentioned Al Green, King Creosote, Leonard Cohen, Bill Callahan, Willy Mason, David Bowie, Andy Shauf. Beyond stylistic leanings, is there a musician you feel close to, not necessarily musically but more on a personal, inner, cultural level?   

I mention him a lot in interviews, I think – the musician who comes to mind in answer to this question is Cass McCombs. I was once asked to write an article about a musician for a British online publication, and I wrote about Cass, but as far as I know it was never published. But I think part of what I wrote was something along the lines of feeling that his songwriting offers a perspective on the world that's similar to mine – a perspective that swings between something like absurdity and surrealism on one hand, and deep introspective reflection on the other. He writes about politics, about subjects that interest me, he writes with a rather unusual sense of humour and, you know, from the perspective of a white middle-class male who's aware of all that. His music and writing are very layered, and I feel like I can connect with them on many levels and draw various layers of enjoyment from listening to them. Maybe that describes him best.

 

I think my debut album “I Dreamed I Was An Astronaut” was the last record they put out, so maybe that has something to do with it. But really, as far as I know, it was down to financial and personal reasons. I'm grateful to them for putting my music out into the world at the start of my career.

 

Across your three albums the sound has become increasingly fuller and more solid, less dreamlike and closer to your band's live dimension – was that a deliberate choice or an evolution that happened naturally on the road? 

I guess it's a bit of both. Once the band came together and I was playing with them more regularly, maybe it became something unconscious – I tend to write a lot of songs with that in mind, knowing I'll be performing and playing the songs in a live setting. It means there's a lot more variety in the songwriting – quieter songs, louder songs, faster, slower – and I enjoy that process, as well as the extra dimension that playing live with the band offers. But at the same time I feel like I'm always following a very natural creative process, almost without thinking or taking anything else into consideration, just following wherever the impulses lead me. And above all, for me, without worrying about other people's expectations – maybe that's why each album is a bit different from the last. So it's really a mix of everything.

 

If you had to pick one representative song from each album, which would you choose and why? 

That's an interesting question. I think for “I Dreamt I Was An Astronaut”, I'd go with “Astronaut” – lyrically it's pretty broad, much like the album itself, covering themes tied to escapism. I can only assume that at that point I was suffering from notions to do with escaping planet Earth – maybe that's quite recognisable. And sonically it was very dreamlike, with a lot of layered synths and so on, which was a major feature of that album. For “Pink Mirror” I'd say “Humans”, in the sense that it acknowledges all the negative aspects of humanity that I talked about throughout the album, while at the same time offering a kind of light or hope, or even faith in humanity. I don't know how I feel about it right now. But what I can say is that I think it's a song about nature versus nurture – I believe upbringing is the predominant factor in understanding what people are really like, to the extent that everything is redeemable, and that's roughly what I'm saying in “Humans”.

For “Violet Waves” it's harder to single out a representative song because, intentionally, every song is quite different – I consciously wanted the freedom to write about whatever came to mind, rather than tying the songs to a single concept, like on “Pink Mirror”. But I'll go with “Back From The Dead”. I've always thought of it as the key song on that album, and it has an element of the surreal or absurd, as well as themes of love in both a romantic and a holistic sense, and if there's anything that ties the songs together across the album, it's precisely those feelings.

 

Despite a certain vulnerability and introspection in your writing style, your songs seem to have their own personality, a complex yet vivid, sharply defined emotional depth. I get the impression that, beyond the rich craftsmanship of the three albums, your intent is not to remain on the margins of pop-rock music – that being a cult artist isn't your goal – an ambition that “Violet Waves” seems to reinforce quite convincingly. 

Thank you. Maybe you're right – I imagine that in any field the goal is for your craft to become your livelihood. I do have that aspiration, and it's not really about fame or adulation – maybe it is on some level, I won't deny the possibility – but I think it's more about the opportunity to be able to support myself financially purely through the thing I love doing: writing songs. That said, I'm genuinely very happy with my life, at least right now. I don't see reaching that goal as some kind of final solution – it's just that I suppose we need to have goals in life, and making music is the best way I can think of to spend my time.

 

I think it's mostly a coincidence. Pink had a lot to do with the specific concept behind “Pink Mirror”, while violet is vaguer. It's more of a feeling, tied to synaesthetic notions. Sometimes colour helps encapsulate abstract notions – feelings, emotions, for instance – in a way that words can't. You know, the way painters and artists are able to express or convey something very evocative through colour. Music, I think, can do something similar.

 

Yes, that would be true. The time between finishing writing and recording a record, and then it being released, can be quite long – at least a number of months. I finished recording “Violet Waves” in February and we released it in August. I wouldn't say I write continuously, but I started again and found a structure for writing and putting together a new album shortly after we went into lockdown in London in March. It's not finished yet and I don't want to give away too much, but I'd say it's very different from “Violet Waves” in terms of both sound and lyrical content.

It's tough – both issues make it much harder to tour Europe. There's very little support, and you don't see any willingness to support the music industry, or the arts in general, from the current UK government. It's very short-sighted, very money-minded – as if our sector isn't seen as profitable and is therefore considered unimportant. Which is also untrue, but setting aside the economics, I understand it might not be so straightforward to put a value on the arts: their value to human life isn't something that can be discussed purely in financial terms, though I'm sure that if you look at quality-of-life indexes, you'll find that cities with more culture perform far better. I really do fear for the future of culture – it's an issue that affects everyone, everyone's happiness, not just creators, and that's the level of understanding from which we need to approach the problem. A life without culture is a very miserable one – culture is a vital part of human existence.

 

Many believe that even the role of music criticism is becoming less and less relevant – the web is full of opinions and press releases passed off as reviews. What's your take on that? 

I think people who are true music fans read, and will always read, good music publications as a source of new recommendations. Obviously there are a lot more digital avenues now: Spotify has changed the way people consume and discover new music, but I believe there will always be room for music criticism from respected publications. I also think it's very important to have some kind of objective critique in a field considered so subjective. In the UK, one of my favourite publications, Loud & Quiet Magazine, ran a successful campaign to secure its future by appealing to current and new readers to subscribe to the magazine. I think that's a positive example.

 

Your guitar style is crystal clear, limpid yet full-bodied, intense and rich with noir shades – what's your secret, and what would you like to improve about your playing? 

Ah well, I'm glad you think so. There are plenty of things I'd like to improve on. Actually, during lockdown I started taking lessons over Zoom from Samuel Nicholson, the lead guitarist of The Ultimate Power Assembly, who you've also met, of course. I think he'd honestly be a better person to ask these kinds of questions.

 

OK, the first two are easy: David Bowie and Nick Drake. Bowie is one of my all-time heroes, undoubtedly an influence on me – though not quite in the space/cosmic sense people assume, more in terms of artistry and general musicality – whereas Bryan Ferry's music is honestly something I only know as background listening. I like a lot of Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd songs, but I wouldn't call myself a huge fan, whereas Nick Drake's albums, when I discovered them as a teenager, were a huge revelation for me. Cohen vs Dylan is really hard, honestly nearly impossible. I have more affection for Leonard – I'm more likely to sing or do my own personal cover of his songs than of Dylan's, and I cried when he died. But Dylan is the man, he has this unmatched songbook, one of the most important, original and influential songwriters of all time. I guess it has to be Dylan.

 

Ah, yes, I think that's true. I loved The Strokes' first two albums, and I think I still love them. But my tastes have moved on, and besides, I don't feel that kind of longing anymore, wanting to be someone else or in any other band. Honestly, I'm quite happy, even privileged, to be the lead singer of The Ultimate Power Assembly. OK, maybe The Bees, if they're still playing.

 

There's always a reference to nature, to the plant and animal world, in your songs – do you feel drawn to the passion for ecology that a lot of your peers share? 

I recently became a gardener, sort of as a part-time job. I've realised that being outdoors and working in nature feels very, you know, natural to me. But in my music I've written a lot about issues like climate change, as in “Gaia”, for example. That's one of my favourite songs, if I may say so. And yes, I suppose I've had a tendency to weave in images of plants and animals into songs that are seemingly unrelated to love, for instance, like in “Killer Killer”. To me it's all connected, all related. None of these things exist without the other. Human beings don't exist in a vacuum that has no need for a healthy planet and a thriving ecosystem – take away one piece and everything starts falling apart. And of course the cosmos is included in all this too. It's all the same thing.

 

Yes, we'd love to tour Italy again. We were supposed to come back at the end of October, November, but unfortunately that's not going to happen. Hopefully we can reschedule as soon as possible next year, circumstances permitting. It might sound strange, but we were genuinely pleasantly surprised by the level of hospitality everywhere we went in Italy. I mean, people are very kind to us when we tour the UK, but it's not the same thing. In Italy we really felt looked after, appreciated, and we were genuinely surprised by that, in a nice way of course. It was obvious everywhere, but the difference between the UK and Italy became especially clear the further south we went. When we got to Vallo della Lucania we felt like little princes, and honestly we loved every minute of it.

 

Thank you, Jeremy, hoping to meet again soon 

Thank you, Gianfranco, it's been a pleasure talking to you.