It starts with a cicada tape hiss and a ghostly drum machine heartbeat, a Wurlitzer drone like sunrise in the desert and the single surfy twang of a guitar chord as James Brute intones “The fire of love is a terrible thing,” setting the tone perfectly for the former Brute Chorus frontman’s debut solo record. It’s a record full of space, its instruments haunting the landscape and Brute, despite the still tender blisters of the past pock-marking his soles, taking his shoes off to fire walk one more time.
Following his band’s split in 2013, James Brute released the excellent Gospel clang of ‘Bury Yourself‘, but releases since have been sporadic, and he stepped away from performing completely for several years. A move from London to Hastings with his young family, after 20 years in the capital, provided a renewed creative spark, resulting in Move to The Ghost – a record steeped in transition, the feelings of displacement, isolation and rediscovery that accompany that state and the memories that it evokes. I’ve recently made a similar move myself and the uneasy feeling evoked by this record of having each foot planted in a different stage of life is acutely familiar.
‘Don’t Ask Me How I Know’, with its jangling guitar strum and the foreboding implication of its title line is exquisitely dark, then ‘Who Cares’ opens with a shiver of saturated guitar that shakes us momentarily out of our reverie before lulling us back into the world between waking and dreaming that much of this record inhabits, particularly in the achingly beautiful keys of ‘Lake of Chrome’. The vintage drum machine and the wispy spirit of the Wurlitzer piano return for recent single ‘Turn You On (If I Could Still)’, which takes us on a trip through a familiar place, that on returning doesn’t feel quite as we remember it, though quite what has changed is elusive.
‘Black Black Cloud’, places us in the familiar situation of questioning our life choices, and an actual rain storm, recorded in situ by Brute, swirls around our ears as the track fades into ‘Ghostland’, in which his haunting vocal picks the bones of the moments of isolation sparked by leaving your home for pastures new, that skeletal drum machine tap-tapping away as pedal steel wails and high-register guitar unpicks our nerve endings and Brute wails that he’s “been marooned, left for dead on the surface of the moon”.
The album closes with ‘It All Ends Here’, clambering over the anxieties of the moment to eventually strike a note of hope over warming piano chords – “Even now, as my stars are ascending, I’m praying for one last happy ending.”
We caught up with James to find out more about the record.
1) What inspires you to make music?
I’m making music all the time in my head. I get twitchy if I don’t play an instrument for a few days. I try to keep my filters open so when sounds get in my head, words can start attaching themselves and gradually songs can take shape. It can be anything. A new set of strings or a familiar chord in a new voicing. I bought a delay pedal and the out-of-the-box settings led me to write Fire Of Love, the opening song of the album. In the time between The Brute Chorus ending and moving to Hastings, I wasn’t writing very much. After the move I opened up creatively again and the songs started to come from every direction. I keep a notebook to hand and a record voice notes daily. I even have a pencil sharpener on my keyring so I’m never without writing implements!
2) What is the best description of your music that you’ve read/heard in a review?
I recently got a lovely write-up in Louder Than War: “songs that ache with beauty and a stark confessional emptiness”. It comes closest to what I would want people to hear in the music. It’s not up to the artist to explain their work so it’s great when a reviewer gets your music and can articulate it to others in ways you never could. After a Brute Chorus show in Hamburg years ago, Die Welt described us as “fuck-blues”. It was meant as a compliment but I didn’t see us in that description. I had a YouTube comment a couple of years ago that I love and perhaps defined the way I was feeling about coming back into writing and performing regularly:
“Like it’s the last musician at the end of the world, playing one last solo act to fill the oncoming void.”
3) This is your first album as a solo artist, how did the process compare to writing and recording with The Brute Chorus?
With the Brutes, I would write the songs but we’d arrange them together. By committee. Then we’d work them up live and shape the arrangements as needed based on our audience’s reactions. Eventually, I would write material specifically for the set once I got an understanding of what would go down well at shows. I got good at writing up-tempo music but our gigs never gave much space for introspection or slower songs. When I moved away from London, I wasn’t really looking to get back into music. But then songs started to come almost unbidden and I developed a very clear vision of how I wanted things to sound. I still worked them up live at open-mic sessions and gradually got to know people on the music scene down here in the process. But once all the music was written, I realised I missed the collaboration and started inviting friends to contribute to the album. Friends I’d left behind in the move, really. Friends I was deeply missing. So, it became a real group effort once again.
4) You’ve moved out of London and down to the South Coast – has the change of scenery had any impact on the songs on this record?
The whole record is about the move in so many ways. It’s about saying goodbye to London, finding my place in our new home and realising how lonely that felt at times. We were looking for a new way of life on the coast away from the big city. But it wasn’t an easy move. The sea came to symbolise a shifting border. I ended up somewhere between day and night, land and sea, past and present, known and unknown. There’s a line in ‘Fire Of Love’, “So you go out at night and you walk the streets alone, look into the houses wish that you were someone else”, that’s about me walking around my neighbourhood after dark, trying to get our daughter to sleep. So, the environment of Hastings is in there but perhaps not in the most obvious ways.
5) What were you listening to, watching and reading at the time these songs were written – has any of that seeped into the songs at any level?
I don’t watch much TV these days. I’m reading more slowly too. But Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act helped me keep my head in the game and free myself from blocks. I read a lot of poetry and am a fan of Bob Cobbing’s word collages. They led me to the palindromic chorus of ‘Lake of Chrome’ and to ‘Carpenter’s Blues’, which is a palindrome song that reflects back on itself in the middle. But really, it’s listening to music that has always been the biggest influence on my writing. I began paying attention to singer-songwriters again. I listened a lot to A. Savage’s album Several Songs About Fire and Marlon Williams’ Fire Of Love. Also, some specific songs early on began to inform the style I wanted to write in. Old-fashioned songs like Jimmie Rodgers’ “Make Me A Miracle” and Dave Berry’s “Crying Game”.
As a record collector, I’m in love with the sound of records. I collect records with rain tracks so I really wanted to have one of those on the album. One night, just before the recording sessions, an almighty thunderstorm broke over the coast. I was holding my phone out of the window to record the sound. Something I used to do as a kid with my tape recorder. That storm is the rain track on “Black Black Cloud”.
6) How important is the visual/aesthetic side of your music and why?
In the past it was a bit of an afterthought. We’d made the record — now we needed some ‘art’ for it. But this time, I knew what I wanted as soon as the mixes were in my hands. I’d been living in these songs for months and the mood of the music was unavoidable. They were my inner world and my way of expressing to the outside world how I was feeling and I wanted to carry that through to the physical package. I wanted the record to look like the sky at twilight in high summer. The magic hour. Hopper time. Midnight blue and starlit. Red as blood and sunset. I made a Pinterest board for my friend Mat Martin, who designed the album, and his partner Chloe Rosser, who shot all the imagery. It was full of nocturnal photography; pictures of full moons over seascapes, chrome, mirrored water and fata morgana, which I often see off the coast here. Everyday magic. I also knew I wanted to be in the images. A blurred figure dressed in white or in silhouette. The ghost of the album title. Being able to communicate all of this to them helped them deliver something that fit the sound in my head. It’s a beautiful package.
7) If you could collaborate with any artist, past or present, who would it be and what would you work on together?
I’d love to meet Jeff Tweedy and write a song with him. I’ve been reading about his process through his Substack and his book How To Write One Song. The way he places words can make my jaw drop sometimes. His lyrics feel so conversational and confessional at the same time. Personal but universal. Equally, they can be quite surreal. He’s able to move between both modes effortlessly. On Twilight Overdrive I really felt like he was singing to me personally. I love that songwriting has the potential to make that connection with a complete stranger. I wonder how much he reaches for that.
Before the recent Wilco show in London, I delivered one of my album test pressings to his dressing room. When I left after the show (which was wonderful) I saw it propped up on the dashboard of the tour bus. I haven’t heard from him yet.
8) Who is your favourite new band/artist that we should be checking out and what do you like about them?
I’m closely watching out for announcements of Scottish guitarist Mark Lewis Heavenor’s new project Mystery Hearts. He’s been posting tantalising videos of him playing a Fender VI bass guitar using a flamenco tremolo technique. The sound is quite mesmerising and I’m absolutely hooked. I can’t wait to hear where he takes it.
9) If you could change one thing about the music industry, what would it be and why?
The need for every musician to pivot to content creation. I’ve been working hard to create meaningful content around my releases and shows but it always feels like there’s a lot more I could be doing. And the pressure to do more is always there. Not least because I’m hooked to my phone. I’d rather have all that time back to just make the art (or answer 10 Qs).
I started a mailing list which has grown a lot this year and enables me to communicate directly to my audience, free from the algorithms. It’s paying off so far. I feel so connected to the people that are reading and the response I get to my emails really gives me a boost. One positive email from a stranger can leave me walking on air for the rest of the day.
10) If you could give any aspiring musicians one piece of advice, what would it be?
Set your expectations. It’s so hard to cut through the noise at the moment. In the Brute Chorus days, I was so invested in ‘making it’ and being a rock star. We had enough brushes with fortune for it not to have been out of the question at times. But when the band came to an end I was just so lost. I turned away from it all and went for a stable career. Now I’m back in the game. I want to play. This time on different terms. I’m still ambitious about my work but I want that ambition to exist alongside the rest of my life. I want to go and play the shows and do the tours and make more records at the same time as being a good parent. By the same token, I want a job that allows me the space to be creative. I want my music to be in harmony with the other parts of my life. Now, for me, success means getting those things to balance rather than one consuming everything else. It’s early days but I’m getting there and I’m much happier for it.
Move to The Ghost is released on 16th October on vinyl and digital download. Get your copy now on Bandcamp
James Brute plays an album launch show at Brewing Brothers Courtyard in Hastings on 16th October with support from from Laura Fell and The Brydes (tickets here)
And you can catch him at SJQ in London on 25th October with Laura Fell and Mungo Parker (tickets) and supporting Possessed by Paul James at The Folklore Rooms in Brighton on 11th November (tickets)
James Brute: Website / Instagram / Bandcamp
Interview by Paul Maps
Photography by Chloe Rosser
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