Wide Eyes feels like your most personal record yet. What shifted for you creatively between your debut and this album?
I made a conscious decision to open up a bit more since the last album. I think I have become more comfortable in my own skin, and I feel I am able to write more personal music at this stage in my life. Before this album, a large amount of energy went into the production as I was essentially learning on the job. At the beginning of this album, I knew I was at a decent level as a producer so I could give more energy into writing deeper songs and developing and exploring themes. Each album is such a long process that there are a lot of learnings on each one. Hopefully, that can be used to make the next albums even better.
There’s a strong theme of vulnerability running through the record. Was it difficult to translate something so internal into sound?
It was hard to come up with the initial ways I was going to tell the stories. I guess the album just embodies that difficulty that with life in general. ‘Imposter’ explores vulnerability but ends positively with a sense of self-acceptance. The song only took this direction because that is what was happening in my life at the time. Once I worked through that and understood it myself, the rest of the process was straightforward. Getting to that point of understanding it was difficult in the first instance but the rest of the album fell into place after that.
You’ve said the album was a “therapeutic process.” Was there a particular song that helped you work something out personally?
Making ‘Imposter’ was a very therapeutic process. The themes that I explore in songwriting have changed as I’ve gotten older. Now in my thirties, I have a much more grounded understanding and acceptance of myself. ‘Imposter’ was written about how I felt socially when I was younger, which is something I have only begun to understand recently and writing these lyrics helped me understand it more. I am generally a shy introverted person and would often avoid meeting new people or very social scenarios. And when in those scenarios, I had a fear of being judged or analysed and I cared way too much what other people thought about me. This really came to the fore when I started doing music properly. In the early days, I put too much weight on people’s opinions of my music. I came to release that I wasn’t doing it for the right reasons, and I needed to make music for myself. It was another manifestation of the social sense of being an ‘Imposter’. As the years have gone by, I have improved significantly in this regard, and I certainly think that now I am making music for myself. ‘Imposter’ makes direct reference to this with the lyrics “dreams to chase poorly and songs to sing badly”. I wanted this track to accept, maybe even celebrate my limitations in music. It may not be perfect at times, but it’s real and honest. What really matters is the fact that I am still doing this, I am still writing music that I love. And that’s what has helped me “free the imposter”.
Teen in the Eighties was praised for its cinematic feel — are there any films, visuals, or moments that shaped the world of Wide Eyes?
The initial inspiration for the track ‘Teen in the Eighties’ came from watching the TV show ‘Stranger Things’. The show has a very cool eighties aesthetic but also a very retro, synth-based soundtrack that captivated me. Life as a teen in the eighties was so different to now, mainly by the fact there was no social media. To be fair, they had other concerns like getting hunted by monsters from a different dimension. I wanted to use the concept of being a teen in the eighties to highlight how complicated the world is now and how that must be for a teen in the current world. I also wanted to speak about social media has become a dangerous tool for political division and polarisation.
‘Nightshade’ was initially inspired by the TV show Luke Cage. I started the track as a villain theme for the show’s villain Diamondback. He ate a plant called nightshade that gave him superpowers. He was a suave night club owner with a dark criminal side. From this initial inspiration, the track took on a life of its own.
These two tracks were influenced by television and shaped much of the sound for the album.
You’ve built a unique sound blending synths, guitars, and orchestral touches. How do you approach finding balance between the organic and the electronic?
I balance this by having a few synths and certain organic elements that I repeatedly go back to. I love the sound of a rock drum kit and even more so when it is combined with a rich, fat synth sound. This is something I repeatedly go back to on many tracks. A lot of different soft synths were used across the album but the u-he repro 5 and u-he diva were used in pretty much every track. They are emulations of vintage analog synths and have an incredibly warm analog sound. They are type of instruments that inspire just by playing them. I think these synths blend with organic elements very well and naturally lean toward a more cinematic sound. I have found certain combinations that work and using these combinations across the album built cohesion for the sound I was trying to create.
Looking back at the journey of this album — three years in the making — what do you hope listeners take away from it now that it’s finally out?
Ultimately, the album was based around my life experiences. It was a simple concept in that regard and I hope that it is relatable as a result. The title track ‘Wide Eyes’ was written while my wife was pregnant with our first child. I tried to imagine what the world would look like through our baby’s eyes and what we can learn by viewing the world with the curiosity and innocence of a baby. This is a very simple concept that I hope people can relate to.
