British singer, songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist Jack Garratt has had an incredible year. His self-recorded, written and performed debut album Phase was released back in February and has become hugely popular in Australia and around the world. His unique style combines soulful lyrics, layered vocals and soaring falsettos with electric guitar riffs, dance-friendly electro beats and soft, dreamy production. Phase is all over the place in the best possible way, it’s the kind of album that’s filled with songs you can listen to over and over and find something new every time.
We had a chat to him ahead of his first trip to Australia in July to play Splendour in the Grass and a couple of highly anticipated sideshows. He is excitable, enthusiastic and incredibly well-spoken, and his passion and eagerness to create beautiful music is inspiring.
Hi Jack, how’re you going?
Hello, I’m good thank you very much, how are you?
I am great! What you’re up to today?
So far I have woken up in a part of the Netherlands that I’ve never been to before with a name that I can’t quite pronounce and I’ve done a couple of interviews and that’s been it. It’s a little early for me but not too early. I had some friends at the show I was playing last night so I was maybe up a little later than I should’ve been but I’m here, I’m awake and I’m feeling good. What are you doing?
Well it’s 6 o’clock in the evening here so I’m just at home chilling. So, Phase, I’ve been listening to it heaps and I’m a huge fan. You must be stoked to have all this hype come off your debut album.
Yeah, I’m very happy about the reaction it’s had. In Australia, it seems to have had a really, really good reaction. I’m surprised because obviously, I’ve never been to Australia. I haven’t come out there yet and been able to play and perform which is where I feel my strength is. To have that kind of reaction to the record alone is really kind of overwhelming. I actually really look forward to doing these Australian interviews because you guys not only seem to have really enjoyed the record but you love talking about it as music and it’s genuinely amazing, I’m so thankful.
That’s awesome to hear and what a way to do it because Splendour is such a fun festival. Is there anything else you wanna do while you’re here?
No, I have a mental block about things that I want to do in Australia because I’m terrified of flying. So at the moment I can’t actually visualise myself being in Australia because I know I have a really intense flight to get through first. So that’s the thing that’s stopping me from being able to go, “I’d love to go here,” and my friends have told me that this is a place I should go visit but the only thing on my mind right now is 24 hours in the sky. *Laughs* As soon as the wheels touch the tarmac, as soon as that happens I’ll be way more relaxed and able to start talking about enjoying my time in Australia but right now I’m way too terrified about the flying bit.
I know exactly how you feel. I’m not terrified of flying but I hate it and I’ve flown to the UK before and I know how long and brutal the flight can be. I’m sure once you get here, you’ll be happy and ready to go!
Yeah… No, it’s gonna be great. I can’t wait, more than anything, just to come out and finally meet everyone and be able play these songs that I love so much to people who have shown that they really love them as well. I’m really looking forward to coming to do that and especially at Splendour because it’s such a great festival.
I think everyone here will be happy to hear that! One thing I wanted to ask you about was your song Worry. It’s massive here at the moment and probably my favourite song of yours. The first couple of times I heard it, I felt it was sad and slow and had a sense of missing someone. Then I watched a video of you performing it live on Berlin Sessions and that version was really angry and gritty and where you usually go really high you went in a completely different direction. I wondered if the song was intended to be like that?
The song’s intended to be both, actually. When I’ve recorded my songs, I – and I’ve noticed that I’ve done it but I haven’t intended to do this at the time – I don’t cast myself as being a vocal artist only because I don’t think I’m good enough at singing to cast myself as that. But instead, I think I’m more of a songwriter, producer, musician type thing. When I was doing the vocals for the album I found myself doing my best to sing the words in whatever moment or emotion took me at that time. What that ended up doing was it meant that when people then listened to the record, instead of being distracted by the vocal takes, they were interested in or awoken by the lyrics. For some reason the delivery of the vocal take was, not plain and boring and simple, but it was there to serve purpose to the song rather than to serve purpose to my voice, if that makes sense.
So that means that when I get to play those songs live I get to put my emotion into them. On the album it’s anyone singing the song, it’s you singing it, the person listening – it’s them singing it. I try and distance myself as a person from the song as much as possible so the person listening can have an instinctive reaction to it and treat the song as a blank canvas. When I go and sing the song live – then it’s me singing it and I don’t know why but Worry seems to bring out this raw intensity, this outburst of.. it doesn’t feel like anger to me, it just feels like a breaking point. I’m not sure what emotion it’s in reference to but it feels like that song is constantly about to fall off the edge of a cliff. Its teetering over and it never quite does.
I think that when I heard that particular version everything you’re saying – that’s how it felt to me. It blew my mind. I was waiting for the soft, high bit but it was so rough instead.
I think it’s important to have interesting and different live versions of the songs people have heard, especially the songs people have heard the most. I’m aware that Worry has, for a lot of people, become their favourite song either on the record or of mine and I want to… and some people would disagree with this and say just sing the song people like, whereas my interpretation is that I’d much rather give them a completely different version of the song that they may also equally enjoy. Live and recording should always be different in my eyes. I would feel terrible if someone came to a gig of mine and walked out thinking they could’ve spent less money sitting in their living room at home listening to the album on headphones.
The UK launched grime, Drum and Bass, dubstep and more, and I wondered if any of those genres influenced your music or do you try to draw from any of those?
I try and draw from anything that I’ve heard. I draw inspiration from things that I’m inspired by. Because of the kinds of questions that I’ve been asked over the last year or so, I’ve been able to actually think about what inspiration means, what is that? And for me inspiration is an instinctive taking of something. Like an instinctive and unknown subconscious taking of something and you don’t get to choose to be inspired. You either are or you’re not.
I, very luckily, have been inspired by everything that I’ve been listening to since I was a kid. It’s all just collected in the back of my head, digested a bit and come out as this sound that I’ve been trying to tamper with. What’s been really interesting is in hindsight, I’ve been able to look back for direct links between songs I listened to as a kid and the music I’ve made today but while I was making it, I wasn’t aware of it and that’s the really cool thing about inspiration. The subconscious element, how you can be so unaware of it. I listened to… it was an album called Split the Atom and I can’t recall the band.
Is it Noisia?
J: Yes that’s the one, I was gonna say Nero and it’s definitely not that! So, Split the Atom came out in 2004, 2005, maybe later but it’s by this crazy almost drum and bass European act from Germany or Sweden called Noisia and their music – I’m almost terrified to go and listen back to it because I think I may have taken a bit more than I meant to *laughs*, but I haven’t listened to that band in 10 years. I 100% have not listened to them and yet I can already, in my mind hear the inspiration that I’ve taken from their music because of the impact it had on me.
I used to listen to Pendulum a lot as a kid as well. I used to listen to Drum and Bass and stuff like that. I was really into that as a kid but at the same time I was listening to Reel Big Fish and I was also listening to Stevie Wonder and all those things have been melting away at the back of my mind and my music seems to come out from that weird smorgasbord.
I plan to move to London next year and I thought you might have some good music venue recommendations – maybe somewhere you used to play or somewhere with really cool vibes. I’m sure there’s a million.
Oh man, yeah, I lived in London for a few years and I absolutely loved it but unfortunately a lot of the venues that I either used to play at that I loved have either changed hands and not necessarily for the better, or have been shut down. Independently owned small music venues are – I don’t want to say a dying breed because some of them are surviving and really striving in that market – but there was a great one I used to go to called the Notting Hill Arts Club which is in Notting Hill. I lived 5 minutes down the road in a room with no windows for about 2 or 3 years and the Notting Hill Arts Club was my local, that was our local. Me and my mates would go down there every Tuesday because a friend of ours put a night on and we’d go and watch some bands then DJ afterwards. We’d get drunk and do the same thing the next week and that was always really fun. I used to play at the Troubadour a lot but I think that’s either getting shut down or there’s a petition to stop it getting shut down. That was where I had some of my first acoustic gigs as a musician trying to break through in London. Also the Half Moon in Putney, that place is legendary for the singer/songwriter scene.
There are some incredible small venues that exist in London and the beauty of them is you don’t know about them. You have to find them or have them recommended by a friend. I think that’s why music that comes from London is so interesting and different from music that comes from any other major city. There is so much diversity and so much versatility to the music scene in that city. I love it. I miss it and I haven’t been back in a long time.
Do you have plans to head back soon?
Hopefully. I don’t live in London anymore, so when I go back it becomes more of a hassle because I have to stay in hotels or an Air Bnb or try and figure out who’s sofa I’m gonna crash on but it’s still nice to go back and see all my friends. A huge part of my life – the beginning of me as a musician started in London 5 years ago when I moved there. I have a really strong personal connection to that place.
Do you think that there’s things about living there that shaped your sound?
I credit my move to London as the first real decision I made into becoming the musician I’m still becoming today. I grew up in a part of the county that didn’t have a lot of diversity, at least in the people that lived there. My family was super encouraging about different genres and kinds of music. I was never told “listen to that,” I was told “LISTEN to it.” I know that’s not that same for everyone, I hear horror stories of kids growing up being told they weren’t allowed to listen to certain kinds of music and were denied the opportunity to enjoy something honestly as a kid. I was very lucky with music, I was always allowed to listen to anything.
When I moved to London I was an adult, I broke away from the safety of a beautiful country village in the heart of England and I moved into one of the busiest cities in the world. My eyes were opened to such a new and vast amount of versatility in culture and people and it directly affected the music I started making. I instantly started making music that wasn’t kind of shit acoustic ballads, which was what I was writing when I was living back at mum and dad’s. I started to challenge myself. The songs I was writing weren’t good enough for me anymore. I wanted to be a better songwriter because my friends were better songwriters and I loved the city I was in so much, it created this passion in me and that’s where my drive came from to become the musician I still feel like I’m becoming.
You’re making me wish I was moving tomorrow!
London’s great. It’s the kind of thing where because of how famous or infamous the city is around the world, as a tourist it can be a difficult place to go. The London I know is different. The London I know is in the back streets and the underground clubs and it’s in the smoke-filled living room at 3 o’clock in the morning when you and your friend are having a video off of the best guitar solos ever. That’s the London that I know.
It sounds awesome. I don’t want to take up anymore of your time but you’ve been so good to chat to!
Thank you so much.
I can’t wait to see your show at Splendour and I’m sure a lot of other people are the same.
Like I said, I’m just looking forward to coming out and being able to finally say thank you to a country of people who have been listening to my music and I haven’t been able to see yet. I just want to come out and say hi.
You can buy Phase here
Catch Jack Garratt at Splendour in the Grass or at one of the sideshows.
Wed, July 20: 170 Russell, Melbourne (Supported by Kacy Hill)
Thu, Jul 21: Metro Theatre, Sydney (Supported by Kacy Hill)
Image: Supplied