Author: Lucia

British singer-songwriter, musician and, yes, dancer Jack Garratt released his second studio album last week.

Called Love, Death and Dancing, from the first listen for me it was obvious that, unlike Garratt’s (beautifully done) debut album that seemed to have been recorded to please his record company and his fans, this one was created by and for Garratt himself.

Each song sounds massively personal and, while the songs as a whole don’t flow particularly well into each other, especially as they are arranged in a different order depending on the medium you listen to them on, I like that.

After all, nobody’s life ever flows well at every turn, so I have never understood why we expect songs about different emotions to do that either?

‘Old Enough‘ is one of the best songs. Not only because the song is about being at an age where the success of love is more likely, and God knows many of us will be happy when we get there, but also because ‘Old Enough‘ comes with a music video that has utterly gorgeous choreography.

Choreography that seems to have been specifically created for our crazy age of ‘social distancing’, considering the video is Jack Garratt dancing with himself, a coat and a coat rack and creating something hugely emotional while he does.

Listen to and watch Jack Garrett’s ‘Old Enough‘ music video and don’t miss listening to his new album Love, Death and Dancing all the way through below too.

It is an even stronger release than his first and proves Jack Garratt only gets better with age.

Jack Garratt has been reckoning with himself for his entire life

“I believe that my goal, and my journey in life, is to accept and love the things I hate about myself – to love that part of me that hates me,” the 28-year-old shares, chatting with me from the floor of his studio. “If I can’t do that, [then] that voice in me is so strong, and it’s so consistent, it will overpower me. The only way I can control it is to accept it for what it is and ask it what it needs from me to be able to get through the day.”

It’s a loaded statement – this idea of accepting oneself for who he is, flaws and all – and it’s one Garratt proceeds to unpack layer by layer, both in our conversation and throughout his newly-released second studio album. Released June 12, 2020 via Island Records / Interscope Records, Love, Death & Dancing is a remarkably compact work of art for what it is. The artist’s follow-up to 2016’s debut album Phase – for which he won both the BBC Sound of 2016 poll, as well as the BRIT Awards’ Critics’ Choice Award – is relentless and indefatigably intense in its expression of self-reflection and self-discovery. Jack Garratt plummeted into his darkest depths, and while he didn’t plan for it to go that way, Love, Death & Dancing is sort of his redemption story, telling the tale of how he fell and climbed his way back up.

While “Time” is a deserving lead single, it is not the sole focal point on the record: Whether you’re bathing in the sweet, cool light of “Mara,” the turbulent tranquility of “Doctor Please” (“If home is where the heart is, mine’s falling down… but a sign outside in your handwriting says that it’s alright not to be okay“), or the raw and transparent aching of “Circles,” the record soars with a life and light of its own.

Garratt’s debut album (and its associated accolades) cast a tremendous shadow over his mental health and emotional state, but he has come out from under the specter of Phasevictorious – an assertive, self-assured, more confident version of himself than ever before.

Jack Garratt releases ‘Circles’, the third single from his second album ‘Love, Death & Dancing’. The track was premiered by Annie Mac on BBC Radio 1 and follows his headline virtual performance for the station’s annual festival Radio 1 Big Weekend.

Jack is also excited to share details of a special longform album visual, ‘Love, Death & Dancing: a film by Jack Garratt and Tom Clarkson’

Shot as a visual accompaniment to the album of the same name, it was co-directed by Jack and Tom Clarkson in January 2020 and is made up of eight standalone music videos.

Jack is the sole performer throughout the film (in homage to his live performances), and as the videos for ‘Time’ and ‘Better’ have already attested to, it finds Jack dancing throughout. Partnering  with choreographer Olivia Lockwood to create a one-man routine for the ambitious film, Jack describes his second album as, “dance music for people who don’t want to go out,” so a one-man dance film resonated with his statement. As has been widely documented, the making of this record for Jack was fraught with, issues of confidence and disengagement with his own talent.

Jack: “I spent about a month choreographing and rehearsing each of the 8 pieces with Liv Lockwood, and I’m so proud of the work we’ve done and the art that we’ve made.

There is no resolution to any of these songs. No questions are answered, no notion or ideas are explained, because they don’t have to be. The visual album was initially planned to be a one-shot film, but turned out to be a complete piece, forming a perfect loop all together.”

Jack Garratt has launched three new songs, ‘Better’, ‘Get In My Way’ and ‘Mend A Heart’.

They’re cuts from his upcoming second album ‘Love, Death & Dancing’, now due for release on 12th June instead of its original 29th May, due to the outbreak of COVID-19. 

“[‘Love, Death & Dancing’ is] dance music for people who don’t want to go out,” says Jack of the evidently timely record. 

“‘Better’ is a dance song about the end of times,” he adds. “It’s a song about the claustrophobia some of us feel when confronted by daily reminders of how a change outside of our control is coming, and how we force ourselves into repetitive sequences of familiarity and nostalgia to feel safe again. It’s a distracting fable about self-awareness and futile escapism.”

The singer recently explained his lengthy absence from music to the BBC in a new interview, revealing how he was hit with crippling self-doubt and had to take time out to focus on his health.

“It screwed me completely,” the 28-year-old said of his quickfire success with his debut album. “All I ever wanted to do was make music that I wanted to listen to. And, at a time when I was figuring that out, I got put into a corner where I had to defend myself for winning awards that I didn’t ask for.”

The Penelopes and Asia Argento have collaborated on a new cover of Suicide’s classic hit, “Dream Baby Dream,” on Pour Le Monde Records. Mastered by Miles Showell (Disclosure, Lana Del Rey, Portishead) at London’s iconic Abbey Road Studios, the single is now available at all digital retailers and as a limited edition 12″ white vinyl. 

For their cover, the Parisian electronic band chose a tempo twice as slow as the original, complemented by the perfect pairing of lead singer Axel Basquiat’s low voice with Argento’s sweet, almost childlike vocals – giving the track a smooth, melancholic feel.

Argento adds to the cast of actresses the duo has been collaborating with for its upcoming album, including iconic French film star Isabelle Adjani on “Meet Me By The Gates.” Inspired by Sylvia Plath’s famous poem “Mad Girl’s Love Song,” Adjani’s highly-anticipated feature marks her first record in over twenty years and has already sparked a media frenzy in France. 

Speaking about their new single, producer Vincent Tremel states: ‘Dream Baby Dream’ is ambiguous. It’s difficult to say if it’s a sad song or a song of hope. I guess every listener will have a different feeling listening to the lyrics. For us, it is an apology to slowness, for taking time, for retrospection.” Over the years, the track has been rearranged by artists including Bruce Springsteen, Savages, and Arcade Fire. 

Asia Argento recently spoke out about what the song means to her, telling AFP France, “This song came after the suicide of my partner. It set me free, raised me, helped me in a bad time. I have turned a corner, even if the pain is still there.”

On the duo’s forthcoming album, Basquiat has taken on the role of dark, stormy crooner: “I’ve listened to producers who’ve told me that I naturally sound more like a folk singer. I thought such a deep voice, influenced by Ian Curtis, Leonard Cohen or Nick Cave, did not belong in pop music. It has taken me years to understand my voice but now I am working with it, trying to bring out the natural crooner tones rather than hide them.”

Since their move to London from their native Parisian suburb, The Penelopes have been making waves with their formidable body of remix work for acts including Lana Del Rey, Pet Shop Boys, and Alt-J, as well as regular appearances at Cannes Film Festival. They were also the only French band invited to play the Meltdown Festival, curated by Robert Smith from The Cure, in 2018. Their new album will be out later this year.

“It feels weird to be back,” says Jack Garratt, on the eve of releasing his first new music since 2016.

“I’m really looking forward to it but also, at the same time, I’m terrified, and I want to quit.”

He’s not exaggerating. The last time Garratt released music, it triggered a crippling episode of self-doubt from which he’s only recently recovered.

Four years ago, the 28-year-old was tipped as one of the UK’s brightest new stars, winning both the Brits Critics’ Choice prize and the BBC Sound of 2016. 

His virtuosic debut album, Phase, saw him hailed as a mad musical scientist, chopping up genres and stitching them together in weird new forms. Soaring above it all was the singer’s gorgeous, aching tenor. 

But the attention didn’t sit well on his shoulders. Garratt, who’d always suffered from anxiety, found himself spiralling into self-hatred and self-sabotage.

Over the course of a year, he recorded an entire album then scrapped it. 

“It was trash. It was awful. It was all bad,” he says. “I wasn’t willing to accept myself in that moment, so I wasn’t willing to have a good idea.”

The problems began with those awards from the BBC and the Brits. At the time, he was one of only four people to win both accolades in the same year. The others were Adele, Ellie Goulding and Sam Smith. 

“The world knows of three of them and it doesn’t know who I am,” says the 28-year-old. “That’s true. It’s not unfair. It’s not rude. It’s not mean. It’s just true.”

Unlike his predecessors, Garratt wasn’t making mainstream pop records. He had a place on the Radio 1 playlist, for sure, and was eagerly pushing sonic and compositional boundaries – but he didn’t have a Rolling In The Deep or a Love Me Like You Do store up his sleeve.

But being put in the same bracket as Adele meant being subjected to a level of expectation and scrutiny he’d never expected. 

“It screwed me completely,” he says.

All I ever wanted to do was make music that I wanted to listen to. And, at a time when I was figuring that out, I got put into a corner where I had to defend myself for winning awards that I didn’t ask for.

“I’m still figuring it out, I’m still dealing with it. I think I will forever.”

The first symptom of his discomfort was a physical one: He lost the ability to dance.

“When I was a kid, from the age of 12 to 16, I used to dance and I really enjoyed it,” he says. As an adult, he’d still go out dancing with friends, flinging himself around the Notting Hill Arts club-like no-one was watching.

“But when I put out the first album, I stopped dancing in public. I just stopped moving. I stopped feeling comfortable in my body. 

“My wife loves dancing and that was part of the reason we fell in love – because we were able to just be like that with each other. 

“And the saddest thing for me was knowing that, one day, I just stopped doing it. I didn’t know why and neither did she. But that was the first red flag that I missed.”