Image: Jamie Hutchings by Jared Harrison – supplied.
Author: Bradley Cork
It’s no surprise that one of Jamie Hutchings’ favourite things is making new music. As an artist, Jamie manages to straddle several differing projects at any one given time and release music that is both hushed and gentle or riddled with hypnotic chaos. Whether it’s in his solo canon, within bands like Bluebottle Kiss and Infinity Broke, or wearing the producer’s hat for other musicians over the years, he has a knack for being able to keep himself busy while sustaining a varied and diverse catalogue that is distinctively his. While most releases from Jamie have an undercurrent of exorcising strife, his latest solo album A New is centred around contentment, new beginnings and rebuilding the foundation of one’s life. With A New being released in late 2023, Jamie will be taking the album out on the road for his first solo East Coast tour in some time. In the lead-up to his shows, we spoke about how the album came to be and future plans on the horizon.
When chatting with Jamie about A New, he elaborates that the album took time to gestate. Sketches of songs were written out of various acoustic noodlings that he had amassed within his voice memo app. ‘They were ideas on acoustic guitar that I had recorded on my phone. During the lockdown I got down to finishing those ideas and turning them into songs. There’s a flavour that comes out with my playing on the acoustic guitar which I don’t really want to get stuck on, but I was happy to let that come out as it had been a while since I had written songs in that style.’ Once the songs were written, he took them to Tim Kevin to record in Tempe River Studio. While there are collaborators on the record including Jamie’s father as part of a horn section, the more direct rock instrumentation of guitar, bass, drums and vocals was all Jamie. The distinctively solo approach ultimately had to do with trying something new. ‘That was another thing that I wanted to do on this album. I wanted that one-man band thing – you kind of react to what you’ve previously played on a different instrument and it’s not a live thing. Those early Paul McCartney records have that feel.’
The combination of more acoustic folk leanings with change taking place in Jamie’s life yielded an album that feels at peace with the past while looking forward to beginning again.
Opener ‘Green Seeps’ looks at how catastrophe subsides and becomes a place where growth can unexpectedly rise. ‘It’s the idea of when things die – the way that nature and life come out of things that have been destroyed – there’s a new form of life that grows out of the cracks. As a body of work, I like that it’s more like a summery kind of album, I felt like it was good to do something a little lighter.’ Lyrically, it’s an album that ultimately feels jubilant embracing change, which latest single ‘It’s A Beginning’ and ‘Life In A Dressing Gown’ can attest to. ‘The themes were around being on your own and having a sense of travelling around, doing whatever but not really having an intimate, one on one connection with someone but to then start navigating a new connection with someone and working out how to do that again.’
Lead single ‘Roustabout’ is distinctive in its approach as both a song that revealed itself through unorthodox recording techniques and chiming piano chords played by Tim Kevin but it took time to reveal what it became. ‘I had that around for a while just sitting there, I wasn’t really thinking about the arrangement. That happens sometimes, it is kind of like being stuck on a line for a song, there’s a line that’s really clunky and you can’t quite get it right but then years later you’ll have a breakthrough and then feel at peace with the song. That felt like this one. In Tim’s studio, we were working late at night and we mic’d up the ukulele in the toilets around the corner from the studio and it had this big reverberant sound, a lot of those weird little noises and techniques were on ‘Roustabout.” The song also has the idiosyncratic percussion that permeate through Jamie’s whole catalogue. ‘When approaching recording, you could make it a straightforward folk-rock song or I could find a different approach to the song that can give it a bit of flavour and make it exciting. Percussion can also be like a jigsaw puzzle to make parts work and for things to come together.’
While the completion of writing A New was slow, this wasn’t due to writer’s block or inaction. In the time that these songs were developing, there have been several albums released via differing projects which includes Jamie’s other 2023 release, the experimental album Making Water. Anyone who is a fan of Jamie’s work knows that he is not one to rest on his laurels, when I ask him about his level of productivity he is quite pragmatic in his approach. ‘I feel like I’m fairly decisive about making music. Once the decision is made about how the direction of a song goes or a record goes, I’m fairly confident about doing it. If I agonised over it and was more of a perfectionist, re-listened to it and wanted to change it, it would be very hard, some people can take years and drive themselves insane – I’m kind of more interested in making decisions as you go or making one decision about something.’
With plans on the horizon to make another album with Infinity Broke and also tentative plans for some Bluebottle Kiss releases, Jamie will endeavour to take these new songs out on the road to celebrate the release of A New; something that he is looking forward to with the challenge it can bring to reinterpret newly recorded material. ‘A lot of the songs I haven’t played solo before. I had written them without thinking about how to physically play them so it’s been interesting adapting them to a solo approach, just playing on your own…I’ve bought a new guitar for the purpose of playing some of these songs more. I enjoy doing that in general.’ Rest assured that Jamie will also be pulling from his extensive catalogue across these east coast shows, with new music consistently on the horizon.
Catch Jamie Hutchings at the below dates:
- Saturday, January 20 – BRISBANE – at Season Three Special guests – McKisko + Kellie Lloyd (Screamfeeder) 7pm
- Sunday, January 21st – ADELAIDE – at The Grace Emily Special guest – Tom Redwood Early show 5pm
- Saturday, January 27 – MELBOURNE – at The Wesley Anne Special guest RJ Andrew
- Thursday, February 1- CANBERRA – at Smith’s Alternative + Shoeb Ahmad
- Friday, February 2 – SYDNEY – at Petersham Bowling Club Special guest – Lisa Caruso
- Saturday, February 3 – NEWCASTLE – at The Press Bookhouse Special guest – Mark Moldre
- Sunday, February 4 – THIRROUL – at Frank’s Wild Years Special guest – Adam Geoffrey Cole Early show 3pm
Melody Menu 