Hello!
Is it morning there for you?
It's 11am. Not too bad.
Morning. That's early for studio time.
I've started booking attended sessions to begin at 10 a.m. so that I can say, "I'll work until 8 p.m." That way I can maintain a healthy work/life balance. With that end time, it's more likely that I can maybe see a movie or have dinner with my wife.
I'm a big fan of that now. I worked with Bernard Butler on a collab [album, In Memory of My Feelings]. He only works from 12 until 3:30 p.m. because he's got kids. It was such a nice, civilized way of working. You reclaim so much of your life. I try and do the same. I try and finish by six and be a human being.
Three and a half hours is a short day!
We worked incredibly quickly. That had its own intensity. You don't waste time when you've only got that window to get something done.
I was listening to that album yesterday. Was it more his song form, with you working lyrics into that?
Yeah, it's totally different from how I work normally. It weirdly predates me making the first Anchoress record [Confessions of a Romance Novelist]. The very last sessions [for In Memory of My Feelings] were in 2015. It took that long [2020] for it to come out. A lot of people got confused and were thinking we did it in lockdown. We'd been sitting on this record for a decade, and no one wanted to put it out. It's an odd timeline, and it's strange because it came out about six months before The Art of Losing. It was so weird to have to do interviews about something I didn't even really remember recording. I met Bernard when I was still at university. I was not even sure if I was ever going to be able to do anything in music. It's quite a different dynamic, obviously, to be the complete control freak I've become since. I'm not sure if it would work now.
Are you careful about that now, when thinking of working on a project? We're obviously not dissing on Bernard; that's just what that project was.
I definitely feel it brought out something different in me, because it almost felt like a holiday working on that project. But that was how I approached it, because I am such a control freak in the rest of the ways that I work. Even when people come to me, I think they're expecting a certain style of production and a certain way of working. I was having this conversation with some girlfriends recently, after the whole Taylor Swift debacle with Damon Albarn and all the rubbish he was talking. [In January 2022, Albarn said in an interview with the LA Times that Swift doesn't write her own songs, claiming that co-writing doesn't count. He has since apologized. –ed.] I don't want to be a spokesperson for all women, but it is a different situation for women. The implications of collaboration are so much more when they reflect back on your skill set. It's weird. I worked a fair bit with Mario McNulty [Tape Op #142] who worked with David Bowie a lot. He always says he never second-guessed the idea of collaborating with someone. Mario would always encourage me to think of it as taking me into a different area and strengthening my team. But, as a woman, it is tricky. Often people will question, "Are you working with that person because you can't do it?" It's hard to negotiate that, which is why I have ended up working on my own a lot. I'm trying to be more open to collaboration in the future, thinking, "I've proven myself now." People come to me for mixing. It's like, "Okay, maybe I can bring other people to the table and not worry about what people might think."
The expanded 2022 version of The Art of Losing has some extra mixes by Dave Eringa.
Dave did the singles on the original record. That's all I had the budget for. It was a real freedom to be able to come back to him and say, "I love what you did with 'Unravel,' 'Show Your Face,' and 'The Exchange.' Can you have a go at the others?" I got him to do two more. Obviously, his drum sound is second to none. It's fantastic. I've sat in on some master classes with him. It's not a case of wanting to improve the mix on the album, because I love the mix on the record. It's getting the opportunity for him to revisit that, as well as finding out what he would have done with it had I had the opportunity for him to mix the whole thing the first time around. It's an alternate version. It's always a pleasure to work with Dave. He's such a nice man. Working with Dave has made me see the enormous possibilities of handing mixes over to someone else. The beauty and the brilliance that a fresh set of ears can bring. He's picking up the details because he's not heard it before.
You are mixing other people's work. Given the skill set you've been developing, are you also producing other people?
Yeah; it's something I've done before, although the credits weren't necessarily pushed to the foreground. I've worked on a couple of records. Because my profile is a lot higher as an artist, I guess people tend to think of me in that way. I'm mixing a project and producing two other artists at the moment. I'm much more interested in making records than I am in getting up on the stage, so anything that keeps me in the studio is a good thing. I don't want to fully transition into one world or another. I like doing lots of different things and learning all the time. It's tricky at the moment because of COVID. People are still very tentative about getting into rooms with other people. But that's working in my favor, because a lot of artists who have approached me about working with them have clinical vulnerabilities and want to work remotely. One of them is in deepest Wales and wouldn't be coming down here [to London] anyway. Before, people thought we had to be in a room together, and now people are realizing we don't have to do that anymore.
Mario McNulty did some mixing on The Art of Losing as well, right?
Mario was just mixing one track on that, and that was done completely remotely. We already established that we have a great friendship, so I trusted him to work like that. We always had long phone calls. Sterling Campbell's drums were done in New York, entirely remotely. James Dean Bradfield's guitar was also done entirely remotely. I was ahead of the COVID curve. I was on tour with Simple Minds so much that I had to produce the record in an airport lounge, or wherever I was. He'd send the file over, then I'd download it on hotel wi-fi and comp it on the plane. I had to do it like that, or it wasn't going to get made. So, yeah; COVID was less of a shock, as far as workflow goes, because I was already working in that way. I knew it could be done. Although I'd love to be back in a room again with people. It would be nice!
There are tradeoffs to working in-person or not.
It's so tricky. It forces us to concentrate on building the relationship and the trust first. I know there are many different styles of production, and many different ways of looking at what the role is, but I've always emphasized the building of a trusting relationship and a communication. For me, it is the secret to doing something good. When we aren't in the same room, we're forced to do that before we even start work. It foregrounds the importance of that. I know some people don't like to get to know the people they're working with in the same way, but I always do. I like to take my time. I would say it's a little bit like being a therapist.
For yourself or for them? [laughter]
For them! Definitely. A good producer can read a room and read how to get the best out of somebody, what mood they're in, what's going on in their life at that moment, and how to ride that. How to get the best out of that situation. I've sat in on a few sessions with Flood [Tape Op #117]. He uses very similar techniques, except perhaps slightly more… I'm trying to think of the right word. Not manipulative, in a manipulative way, but perhaps not always in such a kind way, though always for the best for the record. To see him push people to the edge of their psychological limits in order to get that great vocal take, he's the king to me.
I know that you have preferred, generally, to track your vocals alone and do all the comping. Were there instances before where people were tracking your vocals and you were like, "This isn't the way I want to work"?
Yeah, in the past. On the first record I didn't do them alone, and the process was so elongated for that reason. The production approach on The Art of Losing was specifically suited to what that record was about. I couldn't have sat in a room with someone else and gone to that place that I needed to go in order to get that performance. I've talked about this before. Because I'm autistic, I think I have that ability to detach slightly, so I can engulf myself for the vocal performance. Then I can almost go into this different headspace and become completely detached. "It's not my vocal. It is the singer, whoever that might be." I don't differentiate between myself singing or somebody else doing it. I don't have any ego about that. I'm very brutal with myself, as I would be with anybody else. I absolutely love editing vocals. I've done a lot of it for other people. I don't think anyone would get into this world if they didn't enjoy menial, hyper-focused tasks. I love it! Gary Kemp [Tape Op #145] said he can't stand editing vocals. Other performers say this too. That's why I don't think of myself as a performer, first and foremost. There's nothing I would rather be doing than sitting with headphones on editing a drum take or editing a vocal. I love it! What can I say? I'm not a typical artist or performer, if you want to look at it in that way, and that's not my primary goal in life. It's not where I gain my pleasure. I would happily make records for other people for the rest of my life, and it would not be a great loss for me not to perform at all.
It'd be a loss to us who want to hear your records!
Well, thank you. That's very kind. For me, it's about manipulating the sounds in this space. I get enormous joy out of that. In fact, I've probably had a more pleasurable time making records for other people than for myself, because the pressure's off then. I'm not ever thinking about someone judging me in the same way. I applied a lot of what I had learned from that experience to The Art of Losing – almost removing myself from it. It was obviously quite helpful at the time, and it made my experience much more comfortable because I was dealing with a lot of awful personal subjects in the songs. I needed to survive. I needed to remove myself in some way. I look back and I do wonder how I did it.
The Confessions... record was meant to be written from other people's perspectives. The Art of Losing is focused on events and trauma that happened to you. More real-life stories, and that's also what's connected to an audience. Does that make you nervous, that now the next record will have to retain this personalness, or can it be a combination of the two?
You know what, Confessions was such a long time ago that I don't really relate to it at all. It was a great learning experience and experiment, but for me it doesn't hang together as well as a record. It was such a protracted experience. It took four years. I was doing university and making it in my downtime. I don't think it's a case of anticipating what the audience wants, in terms of if they want the personal or the impersonal. It's more, "Do they want a record that's coherent?" Probably. That focus of having written and made it in a much shorter period of time is much more effective. Obviously, I was only able to do that once I got to a certain place, both financially and in terms of having a label. I don't worry too much about what comes next. I've started making a few bits and pieces for albums, but I'm not someone who ever thinks I'm going to make something good if I try and second-guess what people want. I think people respond to something that we feel passionate about. Who knows what that's going to be until I try experimenting and start doing it. It's probably going to involve a lot of synths.
When I'm producing someone, it's easier for me to collaborate and make a record than it is to make my own record.
I see them as almost the same thing. I guess because people are approaching me since they like what I do already, there's a certain expectation that I'm bringing that to the party. People are approaching me because I play so many instruments, so maybe they want me to be playing and bringing some of that sound to the arrangement. I detach from myself in that way, and think, "Here's a song. What's the best way to present it?" There's nothing different in the way I do that than for an artist who comes to me and says, "Do you want to produce my EP?" It's exactly the same. I treat myself just as objectively. I'm always quite hyper-critical, and that helps. I've always hung on to the idea that self-criticism is a great strength for someone who wants to create anything. "Don't believe your own hype. Don't believe anything about your success." As long as I am constantly holding myself to that high standard, I'll always hope that my work will improve. Don't be afraid to tell yourself that you can do better. Now you've got me thinking about this, and what's going to happen with the next record. Should I be panicking? [laughter]
Don't let me derail anything! When I produce records, I'll sit down with someone beforehand and have these conversations. "How are we going to look at this project?" I enjoy the brainstorming.
To me it's like a sculpture. It makes itself known as the process happens. I guess I'm not too wedded to having a fixed position when I start a project, be that my own project or someone else's. It'll chip away and make itself known underneath. I like to have that flexibility to go with a different direction. I didn't start out making The Art of Losing as my second record. I started making a different project. I had the freedom to ditch those songs, as well as everything about that project, and say, "I'm making something different." I like to think I can hold onto that.
There's a traditional thought that, as a songwriter, you'd sit down at the piano, compose the song, and then record it. I know the DAW has become a place where songs start as well.
Yeah, it's a bit of both. I still have that very traditional approach to writing. The bare bones of it will tend to be written on a single instrument, be that a piano or a guitar. For The Art of Losing, the title track was written straight into Pro Tools, but for the synth part, I wrote it as I would on a piano. It still had that same process. That was partly because of lack of time. I had a drum session booked for the next day, and I hadn't written the song. I needed to get it straight in there, because I needed to take the session with me. I had to have that ready for the drummer. I work well under pressure. I'm good with deadlines.
Besides booking session players, do you set other deadlines?
Not really, no. I guess that's the luxury of how I've worked in the past. I've usually delivered a finished record to the label. No one hears it before it's finished. No one gets input into what it sounds like. I've never worked like that, and I don't plan on changing that either. It's a huge luxury to be able to do that. Again, the same with deadlines; I don't want to impose that. I know something's finished when I'm happy with it. I tend to do drums in sets of three songs at a time. I'll go into the studio for two days and get the drums down. Because I'm playing the majority of the parts, I probably wouldn't even bring in a bass player until quite later on, which is probably a strange way of working. I want to be certain that I know what I want from them. The arrangement and production dictate the song so much, so I do write into a DAW. If we think of writing as being the arrangement and production, which is a big part of how I write, that's why I do it backwards. It isn't finished until it's done.
Though you say it's backwards to do the bass last, Paul McCartney famously did a lot of The Beatles songs that way. That gives the freedom for bass to move in different ways, doesn't it?
Yeah, I work with a really melodic bass player [Beau Barnard] as well. It's a bit of a motto of mine: "What would McCartney do?" As a producer, I don't think he's as praised as he ought to be, in terms of the creative impetus he had with the band. I haven't thought about my process that way. Even down to the opening song on The Art of Losing, "Let It Hurt," the drums were put down right at the very end, because initially there wasn't going to be drums on it. It was only right at the end I decided that it needed that. Thank god I do everything to a click!
Yeah, I figured!
Again, because I'm not university-trained in sound recording, I don't adhere to rules. I picked up what I've learned in studios along the way, but everyone's got a different way of working. As long as I am careful to be correct enough that I can come back and change things – record everything to a click, have enough separation to give options later on – there is no one right way of doing this. I do like that flexibility, and I guess my recording process always has that in mind. I want to be able to change something later on and not have to redo everything.
Oh, yeah. In the years of working on tape, our hands were tied.
