Jack Garratt: "No Cheap Tricks"

Image via Whiteboard

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Image via Whiteboard

Image via Whiteboard

Jack Garratt is winning right now. Literally, in fact.

The 24-year-old singer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist was just last week announced as the winner of the BRITs Critics’ Choice Award (past winners: Sam Smith, Adele, Ellie Goulding, Florence + The Machine) as well as being nominated for the BBC Sound of 2016 poll and the MTV Brand New award.

It’s safe to say that Jack Garratt has had a fantastic year, but 2016 is set to be even better. After releasing two EPs (Remnants and Synesthesiac), Jack will release his debut album Phase early next year, bringing to a close the first chapter of his career, a chapter that started back in February of 2014 when he shared “I Couldn’t Want You Anyway.” Don’t get it twisted, though, this success is the product of years of hard work and a genuine love for music.

From playing whatever instrument was needed in his friends’ bands (Need a trombonist? Jack’s got your back.) to bringing his all-action, one man band show to late night television in the U.S., he has kept his sense of humor and integrity intact.

The day before he went on tour with Mumford & Sons, we spoke to Jack Garratt about Phase, Rick Rubin, his greatest fear, and much more.

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Your live shows are very raw and emotional. Do you find performing cathartic in some sense?

I don’t really know. I like to play shows, I love to entertain a crowd. I like to know the audience is having a good time because I give 100%. A show should always have 100% integrity behind it. With my shows there are no cheap tricks, there’s nothing to fool the audience into thinking they’re having a good time. Instead I like to make sure that I’m doing everything I can to give the audience a good time.

Your voice is incredible. When did you discover that range?

I just worked at it. And I worked hard at the thing I love to do, which is to entertain people and keep myself entertained as well, through a medium that invites integrity and artistic expression. That was kind of the dream for me. Ever since I was a kid, that’s what I’ve wanted to do.

I worked hard at the thing I love to do, which is to entertain people and keep myself entertained as well.

Have you thought of getting a band for the live show, or do you always want to keep it a solo show?

I never chose to do it on my own… I just did it on my own. Having a band or not was never a question I had in my mind—I had a lot of gigs booked up, and I needed to play them! I was playing electronic music on the acoustic guitar, and those two things didn’t really work very well together. My performances of my songs weren’t accurately representing what the songs were like, so I had to figure out a way in which I could do all of this stuff and do it in a quick enough time to make it to the show the week after.

Being able to play more than one instrument at once is something I’ve been able to do since I was a kid. I used to play keys and drums for a friend of mine when I was in his band, for example. When it comes to music my body seems to take over a bit. It was never a question of whether I’d be able to do it, more how I was going to do it.

The fact that people have taken to it so strongly and responded to it with such positivity obviously gives me more reason to keep doing it. I love to know that people enjoy the show. But I will have a band when it’s necessary…well, not a band. I will expand what I do when it’s necessary to do so, is the best way to put it, because I don’t know what that means. As it stands, it isn’t necessary yet.

What does “Worry” mean to you and what inspired it?

I tend not to talk too openly or explicitly about what my songs mean, because I don’t want to give somebody else the wrong impression. The beautiful thing about songs and music is that it’s all interpretive, it’s all dependent on how the person is feeling at the time they listen to it. That’s why your opinions of a song can change over however many years you keep listening to it.

“Worry” and “The Love You’re Given” have very personal meanings to me, and they have definite intent and the lyrics are there for a reason and I’ve written everything to facilitate my artistic creation, but I wouldn’t be comfortable saying what that is. If someone read that and then listened to those songs, they’d be listening to it through my ears rather than listening to it through their own.

I want to encourage people to be able to discover music. That sense of discovery of an artist or a song is kind of a rare thing these days, just because everything is blasted left, right, and center. That makes it difficult for the audience to really find a musician or piece of music for themselves and have their own reasons for connecting with it.

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Your debut album Phase is coming out soon. What’s behind the name Phase?

The songs and names are chapters, and those chapters are very very important, but they’re also supposed to be ambiguous. I want people to be able to explore the album themselves.

This particular time of my life, this phase, is exactly that. The idea of the album is that it will continue. The album will constantly change and go on forever, in the way that I hope to as an artist. This particular moment is just one moment, and that kind of relieves the pressure of it being the first album, as I’m already looking ahead to the second one. I’m looking ahead all the time.

This album took a long time to come together. I’ve been working on it for a couple of years, in terms of when I started writing the songs that ended up being on it. I produced the bulk of the record myself and mixed a lot of it myself as well, but ended up needing to listen through other people to be able to finish it.

I had some very integral collaborators come on board in the final weeks to lend their ears to me and lend their fingers so that I could complete the record with them, which was a difficult thing for me to do because I work—I write, record, and produce—on my own. But it was definitely a necessary thing to do to get the album to the place it is now.

How did the Kacy Hill collaboration come about?

Kacy actually came about through Rick Rubin. I was over in LA for a couple of weeks and had a meeting with Rick and he told me about this girl that he wanted me to work with and she was signed to Kanye’s label. Rick is obviously a close affiliate of Kanye.

Rick just put me in a room with her and we ended up writing and recording “Foreign Fields” that they ended up using on her first EP. She’s definitely, definitely someone to look out for in the next couple of years.

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What advice and feedback did Rick Rubin give you on your own music?

Well Rick’s a kind of distant, almost uncle-like figure for me. I’ve known him for about a year now and he’s just a great dude. I’ve been able to keep in contact with him and we talk every now and then about certain records and certain things and songs that we like. He’s a good guy, I need to catch up with him again soon.

SoundCloud seems to have been an important part of your career so far and you’ve racked up millions of plays on there. People are criticizing SoundCloud more and more these days, especially the loss of the community aspect—what are your thoughts on this?

SoundCloud as a distribution platform was integral to the beginning of my career. Just being able to get my songs up online, regardless of the amount of people who would listen to them, just getting them online was a difficult thing, that’s why SoundCloud was so important. When I started using the BBC Introducing uploader that was so important as well.

SoundCloud and its relationship with major record labels is something I know nothing about. I know that there are disagreements and discussions that are happening, and I have been directly affected by those disagreements as an unfortunate passerby. But I don’t know any specifics.

If it is becoming a distant thing and a service people are deciding not to use anymore then that’s a real shame, because I think it’s a fantastic media platform, but I also don’t have any authority to speak on the situation other than that I still use it. I still upload my music onto SoundCloud, it’s still important, it still holds a huge amount of relevance to the expansion of my career and being able to send my music all around the world in the hope that many many people will want to listen to it.

Do you want to collaborate more with other artists and if so who?

Collaborating is always something I’ve been interested in but I haven’t done that much properly yet. I love the idea of collaborating when it makes sense. The reason I find collaborations weird is that people seem to think that they’re necessary. They think that to be the best of yourself, you’ve got to be the best of yourself with someone else in the room, or that to make a great song takes two or three people.

[People] think that to be the best of yourself, you’ve got to be the best of yourself with someone else in the room, or that to make a great song takes two or three people.

I’ve always just felt that maybe that doesn’t work for me. If I was going to work with somebody I’d want it to be for a different project, I’d want to take myself out of it, because it means I get to take my ego out of it. It means I don’t have an overall goal, I get to go and experience someone else’s creativity. Working with Kacy was so much fun because it was for her project. It was me and her in a room, we had never met but we had this great musical connection. I really, really enjoyed that.

In the future… I’m a big fan of Little Simz, I think what she’s doing at the moment is fantastic and I’d love to work with her. Other than that it’s all about finding collaborations for the right reasons, being able to share your creativity and have them understand and respect where you’re coming from and feel comfortable enough to give a part of themselves to you as well, knowing that no idea is a bad idea, just two people working together for a greater good of creativity. That’s a really fun environment to be in, unfortunately I’ve just been in some bad collaborative rooms before and that jaded my view on the whole thing.

You’ve been touring heavily and putting out a lot of music. How do you relax?

I’m very lucky in that I’m now travelling around in a bus. Being on my own and performing on my own, having that available to me has become a very important thing. It means I get to go and relax on something that’s moving and something that I know is just doing it’s job. I get to physically feel something doing its job without me doing anything! I can be on the move which is actually a really calming feeling.

All of the other time, especially for the live show, if something happens, I have to do it. If there’s a rehearsal I have to be there for it, the performance, I have to do all on my own. Not that it’s a chore, I love it, but it’s nice to be able to return to a bus and sit down and stop. That’s kind of the only time I get, at least at the moment.

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Why did you move to Chicago and what do you like about the city?

Chicago is one of my favorite cities in the world. I love that place. I’ve been there a couple of times before and it always just felt right to be there and felt like a home to me. The fortunate thing about what I do is I don’t live anywhere, and because of that I get to live everywhere. I spent about six years in London but the last year I was living there I was away so much it didn’t really make sense for me to be living there. It meant I could live somewhere else, so i just kind of up and moved to Chicago.

What is the best piece of advice someone’s given you about your career?

I’ve had some great advice come from different places, but about my career specifically, I remember I supported Hozier at a show in Amsterdam last year. I remember sitting down with him after the show and having a chat about a whole lot of stuff. He’s such a kind guy, he’s a very, very welcoming figure and a fantastic talent.

I remember him essentially encouraging me to prepare myself. He told me, “When it comes, it comes in avalanches,” and every single time something has happened since then he’s been totally right. When it comes it hits hard, and the best thing is to mentally be prepared for it and keep your feet on the ground and your head strong and remember that you’re there for a reason—you have purpose. I really remember that conversation I had with him.

What are you most afraid of?

Myself, probably. If anything goes wrong it will be because of me. I have a really, really good team around me, a team that I feel very safe within and that I’ve built up over a long, long time and we work very, very hard to do what we do. It’s a good team, and if anything ever went wrong I would only ever blame myself.

If I ended up losing everything tomorrow—and the thing is, I could, because this has all come about so quickly—the only thing that would ever ruin this opportunity for me and ruin this part of my life would be me. So the only thing I really have to fear, is myself.

But I’m currently on good terms with myself, so I don’t think I’ve got that much to fear right now. I’ll let you know how that’s going in a couple of years!

As an artist do you feel compelled to use your platform to speak about things beyond music, be that political or social issues?

I think anyone should be encouraged to talk about the things that they know about. Talking with conviction is important if you have the right amount of knowledge and information. People should be able to express themselves if they’re informed about something.

I don’t know a lot of things, and therefore don’t say a lot. I have things that I stand very strongly for, but they are only the things that I know I feel strongly about. When the Paris attacks happened I was in Luxembourg, and in Brussels the day after when they made all those arrests. The first thing that people asked me was, “What do you think, politically, should happen now?”

And I haven’t got a fucking clue. I’m a 24-year-old from the U.K. who is trying to be a musician—how am I even being asked that question? The thing I said every single time was, “It’s truly horrible, and the best thing that we can do is come together and be together and realize that we together are stronger than any evil that we’ll face.” But in terms of being asked my opinion, I didn’t understand why I was being asked that question—just because it had happened I was expected to have a political opinion.

But it was so fresh, the wounds were still bleeding, people were still being taken to hospital, there were many more things people should be concerned with than my opinion because my opinion doesn’t matter. I’m a person like anyone else is. In the same sense that I would only talk about the things I know about, you would only write a column about the things that you knew something about. I’m not going to write a song about biochemistry, because I don’t know shit about it!


Jack Garratt’s Phase will be released in March 2016. Pre-order it (and check out his amazing merch) here.

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