Musical magpie Jack Garratt is back with a brand new (multi-part) album, a tour of some of the UK and Europe’s tiniest venues, and an invigorated outlook on life. We caught up with him midway through the tour to chat about the new record, falling back in love with music, and the pitfalls of winning a BRIT Award before you’ve released your debut album.
You’re back on the road again! How are you finding it?
‘It’s weird. It’s the same, but different. I’ve got a great crew and a brilliant touring party of people: I mean, I had a fantastic crew on the last shows I did a few years ago, but this time around is different. It’s nice coming back and doing these venues, too. There are a few venues on this run that I haven’t been to since, like, 2015 or 2016.
You’re touring tiny venues, exclusively playing new material, and asking audience members to place their phones in sealed bags before the show starts. Why?
‘The reason why I wanted to do this tour was that when I did the first album, I got to do about two years’ worth of touring with those songs before anyone got to hear them on the record. I knew that Weathered, for example, was a song that people seemed to enjoy, and I knew that Worry was a song that people also seemed to like; so, I knew that there were going to be songs on that record that people would enjoy.
‘With this record – it’s mixed, mastered, and ready to go, but nobody’s heard any of it. So, it was important to me that I had a couple of weeks of just going out, testing the waters, and seeing how the songs were going to shape up in a live environment and in front of a live audience. It’s been really amazing to do it that way this time. I know I love the songs, and it’s been encouraging to hear people’s reactions to them as well.
‘That’s what I’ve always loved about live music. I’ve always found that a good show is a good show, regardless of whether you know the songs or not.
‘I think if you go to a show and it’s obvious that you don’t know what the songs are, you can become very aware of it. When you disregard that, though, you can just enjoy the performance and it can still be an amazing experience.
‘I very rarely go to shows by artists I don’t necessarily know, but I went to see MUNA at Village Underground a couple of months ago. I didn’t know any of the songs, but the show was one of the most entertaining things I’ve ever seen. The music is good, and that helps, and the performance was incredible, and that helps even more. But, beyond that, just seeing the crowd love something that much… That’s the kind of show I adore. I really enjoyed it, even though I didn’t know any of the songs, because it wasn’t about whether or not you knew the songs: it was about being at a show that was fun to be at.
What were you listening to when you were recording this new record?
‘I went through a big old phase of not really listening to anything. I’m of the ever-growing opinion that there’s far too much new music that exists in the world, which is both an amazing and intimidating thing. But, there being so much new music ended up with my kind of bludgeoning myself into listening to music I knew that I liked, rather than even attempting to dip my toe into the water of new music because there’s just so fucking much of it.
‘I finally took the plunge when I started making this new record. I was hanging out a lot with Jacknife Lee, who I co-produced a lot of the album with, and then another guy called James Flanagan who also I co-produced a lot of the album with. They both found themselves in similar positions of not wanting to listen to new music because there is so much of it, and not knowing what to listen to; and, of course having such a love for the music that they already knew. But they were actively engaging in new music as it was coming out because they kind of have to as part of their jobs. So, I ended up hearing a lot of music that they were listening to, and they were showing me lots of bits and pieces: and, after a while, that ended up with me falling back in love with music again.
‘I’d fallen out of love with most music anyway: I’d fallen out of love with my music, and I really didn’t know what I was doing when I started making this record.
‘The confidence that those two guys gave me, both with just listening to music and listening to my music, was exponential. So, I listened to a lot of The Bell Brigade, who are an American band that put out two albums – one self-titled, and the other titled Just Because – and then didn’t do anything after that. They’re a brother-sister duo, and the male counterpart – Ethan Gruska – released a record last month called En Guard that is fucking beautiful. A great record with really beautiful songs: kind of, like, American classic vibes, and just absolutely incredible.
‘I’ve started listening to a lot of ambient, modern, neo-classical stuff, and found a guy called Leon Vynehall who I’ve had on repeat lately. It’s so intense and smothering: it’s just a really, really luscious, delicately put together record. I’ve got a playlist of all of the songs that I was listening to when I was making this record – maybe I’ll make that public at some point.
‘Jacknife got me into a guy called William Onyeabor, too. I’d not really heard much of him before, but his story is incredible. He released a couple of albums of African funk and soul back in the 1970s and then disappeared completely; and, at one point, he was recorded as having the largest synth collection in Africa. As I said, I hadn’t heard of him before – but, as soon as I started listening to his music, I noticed that he’s a staple in every single ‘Hi, we’re the cool kids!’ coffee shop playlist that has ever existed. It’s always the same: you always hear B-sides from Prince records and William Onyeabor! That’s all you’ll ever hear in those coffee shops.
Some might say that there’s a danger of musicians becoming incredibly jaded when the mechanics of the industry begin to impede on their creativity. Has that ever happened to you?
‘I’ve never had to deal with any backdoor politics. I’m lucky enough that I, very early on in my career, made it obvious to anyone who was going to want to work with me that I consider myself to be the least important person in any room when I’m there representing my music, and I expect anyone who is there working with me to hold the same feelings about themselves. You leave your ego at the door and remember that you’re there to serve what the music is doing.
‘I’ve been extremely fortunate to have signed with a record label that both understands my needs and caters to them. Like, I’ve obviously heard the same nightmare stories that I think a lot of people have heard about getting into the big label business and dealing with major record labels, and I do not have any of those stories to share from my end. But, therefore, I don’t say that they don’t exist, because they absolutely do. There’ll be people that are signed to the record labels that I’m signed to who’ll have absolutely horrible times on them because they are fucking difficult relationships to get right.
‘I’ve had scraps and scrapes and arguments before but, ultimately, I’ve never had my relationships with anyone I work with impede on my creativity. The only relationship that has impeded my creativity is my relationship with myself. My ability to write, or create, or think, or anything, has only ever stopped because of a barrier or blockade that I’ve made for myself, rather than because of one that someone else has made for me.
Your interview with the BBC’s Mark Savage made for an interesting read. You were talking about your BRIT Award win; and, specifically, how others who have received that award are recognised in the public consciousness versus how you see yourself within the public consciousness.
‘And that’s something that I would say came from an outside perspective. The BRIT Award, like the BBC Sound Of poll, was something I was given, rather than something that I specifically worked towards attaining. I would actually say that they stunted the growth spurt that I was on. At that time, the thing that I found annoying about being an ‘undefinable’ or ‘hard to pigeonhole’ musician is that it meant that I got defined and pigeonholed as an artist who was hard to define or pigeonhole.
‘But, when the awards came, it meant that I was now an award winner, and it meant that lazy journalists could now very easily compare me to the past winners of those awards. I think the fact is that there are four artists in the world who have been awarded both the BBC Sound Of award and the BRITs Critics’ Choice in the same year: Ellie Goulding, Sam Smith, Adele, and me.
‘So then, I was meeting people who were going ‘you’re going to be the next Sam Smith!’, to which I’d reply – ‘well, I’m not.’. Do not get me wrong, I’d love to be the next Sam Smith: but I don’t make the music he makes. It’s incomparable, and the only thing that compares us is an award that we’ve both won that in itself is hard to define.
‘That’s why it’s been really tough for everyone who’s won those awards since then to go on and make sustainable careers in music because they just make you re-evaluate so much about yourself.
‘Or, at least, they did for me. I can’t speak for anyone else but myself, and I was of a weak enough will and an uncertain frame of mind that when I got given those awards, I freaked out. You cannot prepare for them at all, and a lot of what gets reported about you afterward is that you think you deserve them. I don’t think I deserve them: I was just given them by someone.
‘It’s really fucking weird and I find it a really strange thing. And, to my knowledge, there’s no established system within the industry that allows people like me who have gone through something like that to talk about them and get help for them.
‘There’s nothing, to my knowledge, that allows me to freely and openly talk about this stuff, which is why I’m using the platform from this record to do it instead. And this is why I’m doing this tour: I’m going up on stage every night to tell people the same stories and talk about the same things; and, it ultimately boils down to this music, that all of you who are here have bought and listened to and loved. That album, Phase, means such uncertainty for me and such confidence for you, and nobody has the opportunity to know about those stories unless I talk to them about it. That’s why I’m here and that’s why I’m getting up on these stages every night.