Music > Interviews

Interview with Nick Mulvey

04/03/14

Nick Mulvey may be new to you, but he’s already had one shot at the music game – and hit the target. Previously a member of instrumental Mercury nominees, Portico Quartet, he learned how to say so much, by saying nothing, way before he stood in front of the mic. His respect for the craft, and slavery to its motions, have given him strength as a solo artist who’s becoming hard to ignore. The industry is listening Nick - again.

How’s it going? I’m alright; I’m on a very rainy North London street, coming home from the launderette. It’s that glamorous.

That sounds like a music video in itself. A very rainy, very English music video maybe, yeah! 

A bit different to your beautiful video I was watching earlier actually. Probably the polar opposite of ‘Cucurucu’. Do you know what, it couldn’t be more opposite – you’re really right.

I think it needs to be considered for the next song. I think so; it’d keep people guessing, wouldn’t it?

Yes, especially about what your washing is. Maybe your undies. Yeah, you might get a glimpse of my undies. Get ready!

That would be a real treat. Um… yeah, why not?!

You’re coming to Norwich as part of your tour. Is that why you’re at the launderette? Doing all your pre-tour washing? It kind of is yeah, ‘cause I’m going on holiday tomorrow and that holiday will lead me right up to the tour, so it’s now or never really.

See, there’s all the practicalities of being a musician that I don’t think people appreciate. They think it’s all fun and games. Yeah, it’s not all hot tubs! Although it is partially… [laughs]

So you’re having a bit of R&R before the big tour starts? That’s right. Totally, yeah; two weeks on the beach, then I’m in to it.

I thought we’d take a little look back before we look forward: I was a Portico Quartet fan - not that they’ve disbanded – but you were doing such good work with them. You were all making all the right noises as a band – it must’ve been a wrench to leave. I know you took a long time making the decision… No, it really was something that grew until – it was kind of happening anyway, so I had to just author it, d’you know what I mean? I was growing increasingly – I was needing to return to the guitar, basically. It’s my primary instrument, and it was really calling me, as well as singing. By the time I was 25, I hadn’t sung much since I was 18, so my voice hadn’t developed as a singer and it kind of became intolerable not to make it a focal point, as well as songwriting and working with lyrics, and all the elements that I’ve gone on to do. They really began to tug at me quite strongly, and at the same time, and by the same token, the boys in the band were moving in a different direction – more of a self-recycling, electronic approach. And because they were all on their primary instruments, bass, drums, saxophone, they were kind of on this second phase journey with their instruments, they wanted to doctor, or modify the sound. With the hang drum being this really beautiful tangent, but a tangent nonetheless, I wasn’t really growing with them at that point. I had the duality of being on one side and the other, you know. It became unavoidable really, so I put some words down and people said it was brave of me to leave the band, but it was actually already happening. It’s as though music’s in charge.

We can see that music is almost an extra sense for you. You studied Ethnomusicology, didn’t you? Did you know Este from Haim also studied it? Well that’s a good little fact! Wow!

If you’re ever at an awards ceremony and you bump into Haim, you’ll have something to talk about. That’s an awesome favour! We’ll talk about the rule of gender ideology in Tibet and Shamanism and music!

There you go! I’ve given you a chat up line there; they do seem like girls that’d be good to hang out with. I love those girls! That’s amazing, thank you.

I wanted to talk to you about your relationship with your guitar actually, because I’m making a big assumption that you’ve got one best friend guitar – soft wood worn, that you can throw around as you need to. You’re absolutely right, yeah! Totally, and even my grandma bequeathed me to go and buy it and I went on a mission when I was 18 to the south of Spain to go and buy it, and it’s all very romantic. That’s the instrument that I’ve always played and it’s funny because I’m deeply into guitar, but I’m not deeply into guitars, if you know what I mean. People stop me after gigs sometimes and tell me about their instruments, or their techniques, or have I heard of this player, or that player and normally, I haven’t. I’m not that in to that world. I find that the guitar is the platform that I interface for the music and the pattern and the expression, and I do love the platform, but I’m all about the pattern. Indeed, on that level, that’s what I loved about Portico Quartet and that’s what I practiced on the hang drum, so even if on the surface the two platforms are quite different, from my side, appreciating the patterns and the musical tendencies I care about – tension and relief, repetition, hypnotic qualities, the mechanics of euphoria in music – all that kind of stuff, I feel a very tangible thread between the worlds of what I was doing in Portico and what I’m doing now. Even though the guitar is right up there, it’s kind of not about the guitar, do you know what I mean?

I was thinking that the work you did with Portico Quartet, before you opened your mouth or put pen to paper, is really significant. It’s invaluable if an artists knows when to let the music speak, which your experience must lend itself to. Do you think you’re pretty strong in that area – knowing how to balance a song out? Yes and no; I’ve always held that as a really essential quality, and it remains one of my highest priorities, to really balance the musicality of a line and that which you wish to communicate, you know. All my favourite lyricists do that, and whenever a conveying of a message has to contradict the musicality of a line, I consider it a failed line. Even simple, but great stuff like Chuck Berry; “It was a teenage wedding and the old folks wished them well. You could see that Pierre did truly love the mademoiselle” – it’s got this effortless, playful trip to it, but the guy’s a genius. It’s got that flow to it. So for sure, I pride musicality over the message, but then I also find when you allow the musicality, you get much deeper messages, or more interesting messages, you know. I definitely work in that order of priority, but I’m still growing, you know. I can feel quite keenly points within the songs where I get a bit conceptual and to me, it kinda grates. Some of the songs I wrote just after Portico, there can be a bit of like, ‘check out my metaphors!’ I’m growing out of that though, you know, and I feel with the next batch of songs – my responsibility in the songwriting process is to make all the right noises, and when you truly make all the right noises, you’ll be astounded by what messages you stumble upon. In that way round, it’s the right order, you know; Paul Simon always talked about being the first audience member, even though he’s the artist, he’s the first audience member, and there’s a real magic in that. That’s the key to the doorway into the heart of the whole thing, you know; it doesn’t go beyond him – he’s allowing it, but also observing it. That comes from honouring the musicality of the line. I mean, some writers start cerebrally and conceptually, I don’t know, some writers do, but I don’t.

I’ve read that your album is finished, but we’re obviously just still feeding off the single at the moment. But it’s done, it’s mastered – - Yeah, totally, we’ve got it. I feel like we set up our experiment, our parameters and we took a long time in terms of defining how I wanted to go about it. It was two years’ worth of recording the songs, doing some really low-key recordings, then some more with a bit more backing behind them. I released two of those, but I think I did at least five sessions. I learnt a lot about how I wanted to approach texture and arrangement, a lot about technique, and all of that in tandem with my growing in confidence as an artist, to actually say what I want to say. So by the end of last year, when I’d signed a record deal, and through that deal met Dan Carey – he’s a producer, but felt like an old friend very quickly – from the moment I was in the studio, right from the off, I had this awesome sense of definitiveness, you know, that what we were getting was how it should be, and how it’s gonna be. That was a full life thing, you know; the music never just exists in isolation to my life, it’s the surface-level fruition of the rest of my life. I felt like I was growing as a person, with my relationships – I met someone and fell in love this summer, and a lot of things collided, so I just went in to the studio ready.

Ready. Game face on. That’s good! I think it’s brilliant that Dan Carey produced the album, because he’s one of the most diverse and all-encompassing producers in the biz. Yeah, we really clicked immediately and he had a lot of the qualities I knew I was looking for. Knowing well what my tendencies are, as a musician, my strengths and weaknesses, I knew what I wanted from that collaboration and that was someone with an appetite for rough textures and odd numbers.

Did you put an ad in the paper for that? ‘Man seeking rough textures and odd numbers’. I could’ve done; I wonder what I would have gotten?! GSOH. You know, ‘cause I know essentially I like my music to be simple, you know, and then I like to get clever and detailed with the textures, but at the heart of it, you can reduce what I’m doing down to one guitar in a song, but left to my own devices, I could have made all my own decisions to round them off, you know, worked in 4s, 16s, 32s, make my bars even, you know, so therefore I knew what I was looking for in a counterpart was someone who was comfortable with 9s, 7s, 11s – or better than that, and this is what Dan Carey did, was he welcomes chance. And in him welcoming chance, I welcome chance. That played out in a lot of different ways in the studio, you know; errors were very much welcome, and that’s why we recorded the whole thing to tape, only partially because it has a nice sound and quality, but mostly because when you’re working to tape, you have a greater propensity to allow error, because it’s much more tricky to fix things. If you work on digital, even if you all agree you like a degree of error, and what that brings, when you can fix stuff you invariably do. Chance was a really important aspect because it was a real counterweight to how much I measure everything, you know. Which I do.

What this all says to me though, your move from Portico Quartet and your receptiveness to chance, it says that you’re a man that doesn’t seek security, that you don’t mind change. Is that musical you, or does that permeate the rest of your life? Well, I think sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t, you know. I think that security’s often a myth anyway, but simultaneously, our security’s assured; I kinda feel that on a deeper level in that I’m happy to be here, you know, and I welcome the mystery. Always have done. Since I was a teenager, I’ve always held that close in my mind; I remember thinking how nobody seemed to talk about the most obviously bizarre things, the fact this experience is really happening and every time I’ve thought those kind of thoughts, I’ve felt exhilarated and very energised. To welcome mystery was borne from the fact I’ve come from quite a secure family, so I wouldn’t say that I dismiss security, but the two work in a constant tandem, you know. My ease with newness and change and mystery is probably borne from being a secure person. That might sound a bit wanky in an interview though!

So you don’t think you’ll get unsettled within yourself then? How will you change your own direction? I think it’s all about giving up control, you know. Or the myth of control, ‘cause it’s a myth anyway. When you realise that you don’t really have a choice, that things are changing anyway, you may as well get in line and change with them. It’s also about what you want; if we all thought about the ideal life we’d want, it’d be shot through with chaos. All the fun things we ever do have that anyway. Knowing that, and welcoming that is how you welcome change.

Emma R. Garwood

Nick Mulvey plays the Norwich Arts Centre on March 10th. For tickets, go to www.norwichartscentre.co.uk. Read the uncut version of this interview at Outlineonline.co.uk