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callmeblake · 1 year ago

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Transcription of Frank’s article in kerrang #1773 from May, 2019

from mixtapes and regrets.com

Frank Iero

There is no resolution. There is no meaning. There are no neat bows tying up errant strands or loose ends. Because real life rarely pans out how it does in movies.

Sometimes, all that’s left is a festering pit of anxiety in the stomach – gurgling, acidic and debilitating. Because if you’re brave enough to question the apparent entropy of the universe, be prepared to end up with anything but satisfactory answers. That’s where Frank Iero finds himself in 2019, still recovering from the fallout of the day that changed his life forever.

“Thanks for not making me cry and not treating this like a fucking Oprah [Winfrey] interview,” he says, gently chuckling as we get into the heart of a lengthy, often heavy and sprawling conversation. It’s the kind of laugh that belies a very real gratitude, or perhaps relief, at not being forced to yet again retell and relive the garish details and still-raw horrors of the road accident that he and his touring party were lucky to survive in Sydney, Australia on October 13, 2016. Two and a half years on from that brush with mortality, his physical convalescence may be complete, but the psychological and emotional scars endure.

“I think about it every day,” Frank confesses. “I still have nightmares about it. That moment, I will never forget – it’s still there. It’s not like an experience that shall-not-be-named, nor do I have to shy away from it, but there are certain elements of that day that I don’t know if I’ll ever be okay with. I just have to accept it and move on, but it’s like nothing’s been settled. That’s a horrific feeling.”

It’s a chilling insight into Frank’s state of mind as the release of his new album edges closer at the end of this month. Barriers will be his debut release on UNFD, and it’s also his first with new band The Future Violents, which sees him once again joined by long-time collaborator, fellow survivor and brother-in-law Evan Nestor on guitar, alongside former Murder By Death bassist Matt Armstrong, multi-instrumentalist Kayleigh Goldsworthy from Dave Hause And The Mermaid, and Thursday’s Tucker Rule on drums. On an album full of firsts, though, chief among them is that this is the first one written since that life-changing event. Understandably, there’s a lot of pain sewn into the seams of the songs – the kind a psychologist could have a field day pulling apart and analysing. Ask the man himself what he thinks a professional might make of the lyrics on Barriers, however, and he’s got little but exasperation left in the tank. At least, right now.

“I’m fucked if I know,” Frank shrugs, with a typically stoic, good-natured smile. “Every psychologist I go to, I don’t have a good relationship with them. We don’t get along, it’s weird. I remember as a teenager going to see a psychologist for the first time ever and he told me that I should think about doing acid. So I was like, ‘Well, I guess I have to, it’s doctor’s orders,’ but that’s probably not the best advice. It opens doors, but I don’t know if that’s the advice that I would give to my kids.

“Maybe I just haven’t found the right therapist yet,” he concedes, “but I seem to end up finding people who rub me up the wrong way and give me advice that I disagree with. As if I know better…”

Maybe in this instance, Frank Iero does know best. It’s clear from talking to him alone that he is still very much in the grip of the trauma that naturally comes as a result of a near-death experience, and he readily admits that is indeed the case. But it’s one thing knowing the theory and received wisdom of how to deal with such trauma, and yet another entirely being the person who is left to pick up the pieces in the aftermath; to put that theory into practice every day. It has, understandably, changed his whole outlook on the world.

“I know this probably stems from what I experienced, but I started thinking about how violent, and sudden, and abrupt life can be,” he explains. “Elements of this world, they aren’t always the prettiest things, and they’re not always the things that we expect. Living violently, for me, means to be active in living; it’s the action of causing a ripple in a stream. To live passively, to just be a passenger, to be someone who’s just kind of observing is a very… When I think about the world being the same place it was before and after me, that feels like a sad existence. I feel like there needs to be a change caused by every life, and change is inherently violent. So when I named the band, I thought of not just the people involved in making the music, but the people who are involved in listening to it and being affected by it as these elements or conduits for change – the ripple…”

Frank talks about the ripple effect a lot now. In that respect, Barriers is something of a first creative wave on his part – the thinking being that its very existence might encourage and inspire change elsewhere, in ways which are as yet unforeseen, even to him. That comes with a lot of pressure, self-imposed or otherwise. Not that he felt that he had any choice in the matter, regardless.

“I knew what I wanted to talk about on Barriers, I just didn’t know how to say it at first,” Frank admits of the imposing challenge he faced going into the album in earnest last March. “I felt like the things that I needed to get out on this record were so enormous that every time I wrote something down, I was like, ‘That’s just not good enough, it doesn’t cut through to the heart of it.’ Sometimes you try to be too clever and it ends up blurring the magnitude of what’s being said. So it took a while. And I’m glad that it did. There are songs on this record that I’ve wanted to write for years and years and years.”

Frank Iero has been ruminating on a theory of late. It’s one that’s as disconcerting as it is complicated, but in the aftermath of the confusion and existential reflection caused by surviving a near-death experience, he’s often wondered if he’s really here at all. Imagine for a second – as he finds himself doing a lot these days – that he didn’t actually make it that day. Or perhaps that he was supposed to meet his end in the accident, and yet he somehow avoided that fate – that he’s cheated death, Final Destination-style. It sounds like classic survivor’s guilt – when a person who has experienced something tragic or catastrophic subsequently feels so unworthy that they believe they should no longer be alive – although he insists it’s something much more than that. These are the kinds of complex questions currently swirling around inside Frank’s head – an illustrative example of just how profound an effect the events of October 13, 2016 have had on him.

“There are a lot of elements of it that are really fucking weird,” he gasps, holding his hands up as if acutely aware of how ‘out there’ he sounds as he tries to explain his frame of mind. “You start to feel almost like, ‘What if that was your path and you were cheated out of it?’ And yeah, you’re happy to be alive, but at the same time this trajectory that you could have possibly been on, maybe that was your time? So, why are you here? Is there something you’re supposed to do? What if you’re not supposed to be here, and you’re just fucking everything up?”

He takes the edge off the weight of that grim thought by adding in a touch of gallows humour – something he does a lot nowadays – by suggesting that maybe it’s his fault the current president is such an abject failure, as if somehow his own survival that day has had the knock-on, chaos theory-like butterfly effect of creating that disastrous ripple in the wider scheme of things.

“I don’t know if it gets any easier with time,” he frowns, considering the possibility that this eternal questioning of everything may be his reality now. “This [event] has absolutely, 100 per cent changed my life. When you watch movies and people have these kinds of experiences, they’re usually like, ‘Oh, but now I feel great about it, because I could have died and everything’s awesome.’ I mean, I’d like to think that. So you’re left wondering, ‘Why don’t I feel like that?’”

It doesn’t help that he’s since had to return to Australia for a doctor’s appointment, bringing the ordeal back to the forefront of his mind – a “really fucked-up experience” which resulted in a week-long panic attack from the moment he stepped off the plane. But while he says that everyone involved in the crash is doing much better now and they chat about it occasionally, they all have days where it’s still as frightening as it is difficult. It’s a struggle captured ultra-poignantly on the song Six Feet Down Under. ‘There’s a part of me that’s not sure if I’m here / Yeah, there’s a definite part of me that don’t believe in the now / And that’s just the start of it, ‘cause I ain’t convinced you’re all real’ Frank sings, laying out the full extent to which he is wrestling with the weight of what’s happened to him and trying to make some sense of why.

“Not to get all weird and metaphysical,” he begins by way of a jocular disclaimer, before indulging those very tendencies, “but like, is it possible that there’s these crossroads or branch-off moments where things could have gone one of two ways? And maybe there are different planes of existence where we didn’t make it. And this one where we did. And am I currently living in that one? I don’t know. Even in my therapy sessions, no-one can really answer all the questions that I have. Did I actually come out the other end? Am I still alive? Or is this all just a weird figment of my imagination? No-one can truthfully answer that question, or tell you that this is real.”

It puts into stark focus the scale of the task Frank Iero faced in writing Barriers. It makes you wonder how he managed to get through it at all, when his mind was plagued with demons and dilemmas much bigger than the average human being ever faces, let alone an artist trying to express such thoughts and feelings creatively.

“I came to a resignation,” he explains of the process of rebuilding himself from those depths. “Whether I believe it or I don’t, or I question it or not, I’m here, and I have to live in the world that I perceive to be the real world. You can’t just be like, ‘Oh well, this isn’t real. So, I’m gonna just start fucking going off, snorting rails and betting the house, because it doesn’t matter.’

“You have to accept this life and I’m thankful for this life, because I have my wife and my kids and my family,” he continues, gripping on to the only tangible sources of comfort and reassurance he can muster. “I’m making music that I really enjoy and I’m very lucky. If this is a figment of my imagination and I wake up at some point, I’m going to be so bummed. I listen to this record and I go, ‘Wow!’ but I think, ‘Well, this is the kind of record I could only make if I was actually dead and I did it all in my imagination!’ That’s where I’m at right now.”

Admittedly, where Frank Iero is at right now seems like a place of tremendous pain and darkness, but in the process of rebirth and finding himself again via Barriers, he’s happened upon a path that may yet be marked ‘enlightenment’, ‘peace�� or at the very least offer some form of contentment.

Incredible as it is to think, given all that has come before, this is the most personal set of songs that Frank Iero has ever been involved in. It will also, he claims, be his last album. But then again, he says that every time he makes a new one. This time, however, he has good reason to believe in his own fatalism, given the close-call nature of the cards life has dealt him in recent years. It’s why a record he believed would be his last one needed to be filled with firsts. After all, if there’s a possibility that you’re not going to ever get to do this again, why not give it everything you’ve got left, right? That’s why he’s stepped outside of his comfort zones in ways he could scarcely have imagined before now. That’s why his face appears on the cover artwork for the first time ever. That’s why a lot of the stuff that’s made the final cut are actually first takes (“Shit’s unforgiving, so you better be on”). That’s why Frank has written in a much more direct and personal way than he has ever done. And it scares the crap out of him.

“There are a lot of things on this album that, oh man, they just freak the fuck out of me,” he admits with a nervous grin, bearing in mind the imminent prospect of sending it out into the wider world. “On the first record [2014’s frnkiero andthe cellabration’s Stomachaches] I feel like you can hear a lot of me trying to hide behind stuff. I don��t fault myself for that, because it was right for that time, plus I don’t think I really knew that the record was ever going to come out. I made it to put in my drawer and maybe play it for my kids one day. I swear I never expected to be doing this. You can probably listen to that record and tell, ‘This person doesn’t think anyone’s going to hear this music!’

“This time, there’s stuff about my relationship with my parents, and my mom especially,” he says of this new, open and more transparent version of himself. “That stuff’s been touched on before, but this was a pretty raw time to do it. Each song is about a moment in time, where there was either a wall being built up or broken down.”

Hence the record’s titular thread and theme. It’s a sentiment echoed in the words of the artwork’s inscription, too. For that, Frank enlisted his father’s handwriting. It reads: ‘Everything from nothing, with nothing to prove, destroy the walls they built around your heart, keep the faith’ underneath the ever-significant and recurring digits 1-3-1.

“They’re an important grouping of numbers for me – one and one being my wife and I, and the three in the middle being my kids. But also, when I first started playing guitar, my friend John had this Telecaster that he had 13 inscribed on, which he gave to me and I used it a lot. So when I made my own guitar, the Phant-o-matic, I put a 13 on it and then when My Chem ended I started this new chapter, so I reversed the numbers to 31. It’s also my birthday [October 31]. So these numbers keep coming into my life.”

The breakthrough moment apparently came with the fittingly-titled, Stax-like soul of A New Day’s Coming, which opens the record and acts as a vessel for “wiping the slate clean and starting anew”. Ironically, it’s a song that he’s been trying to nail for years – existing in nascent form first as a lullaby that he used to sing to his children, and later as a demo that he’d challenge anyone to recognise now.

“Sometimes I feel like songs are like relationships,” he begins, explaining the extended gestation period for that one. “You meet people along the way and you’re like, ‘Oh wow, this could be really great. But we’re not at the right time in our lives for each other.’ They’re all like little love affairs. New Day… is like saying, ‘Forget everything you know, let’s start from here,’ which works in your own personal life, but also in your sitting down to digest the record.

“That really captures what I’m trying to get across with the name of the record, too,” he adds. “We’re so concerned with protecting ourselves that we build up these obstacles and these barriers that we think are going to keep us safe, but they end up holding us in, stopping us from experiencing new things, and we miss out on so much. So there’s that duality to it.”

Duality is key to a lot of what Frank has committed to record on Barriers. In pouring his soul out on these songs, he’s had to expose parts of himself that even he feels uncomfortable with. It’s a cleansing of sorts; expelling all that he’s had bottled up inside and exploding into full view for the first time – a kind of recorded caterpillar metamorphosing into a butterfly.

“You have to remain hopeful, to wipe the slate clean and start anew,” he reflects on the process. “Because not every day is going to be great. Some days are gonna fucking suck, but you have to get back up, brush it off and fucking try again. You have to. Quitting is not an option. There are so many things in this world that are designed to bring us down, that’ll make us bleed and hurt. We don’t need to be an extra thing on top of it all.”

Despite all of the evidence to the contrary in the world around us, Frank can, however, see a distant silver lining in the clouds above.

“I do feel like, as far as times are concerned, it’s cyclical,” he offers by way of a hopeful parting message. “There is going to be a rain to wash this all away. Not to say that we need to take a passive backseat to it – we need to be violent and active in doing things to create that change – but we can’t just say, ‘Oh, everything’s fucked, it’s over. Burn it down.’ We have to turn the hose on and wash the scum off the streets.”

And that lack of resolution gnawing at the back of his mind all this time? All part of life’s great mystery. That’s as much as he’s got for now, and maybe that’s just fine.

“Sometimes you just end up with more questions in life,” Frank admits, wryly. “I like that dialogue of ‘what if?’ That search is not about finding answers. That searching and asking those questions? That’s the growth. It’s like life – we don’t know why we’re here, but all we can do is keep asking questions…”

(See my posts about his article, including the posters, here)

#frank iero #L!1173 #may 2019 #2019 #kerrang #andrew lipovski #butterflies

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mylyricpages · 23 days ago

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INTERVIEW WITH JEFF SCOTT # 10 ( 2024 )

“I’ve struggled a lot this year, I can’t deny that, but every time I do this I think it helps me figure myself out just a little bit more.”

James Ellis travels through a rain lashed early September morning to talk about his fourth new lyric collection in two years, trying new things, fulfilling old ideas, dealing with loss and re-evaluating his previous work. “I’m proud of it all,” he tells Jeff Scott, “but recently I’ve been re-evaluating a lot of stuff.”

THE RAIN, WHICH came early and heavy, has thankfully subsided, a damp freshness lingering in the air as clouds still hover menacingly between the first beams of sunlight. It feels like perfect timing as we sit outside Beach Cliff Fish & Chips, located on Penarth’s esplanade and a stones throw away from it’s art deco pier pavilion which overlooks the pebble beach and views of the Severn Estuary across to England.

This place was once known as the garden by the sea and as autumn seeps in that feels particularly apt. I’m sat across from James Ellis, who’s chosen this idyllic locale to talk about his latest lyric collection ‘The Saviours & The Songs,’ written over the course of summer just past.

As far as the lyric side of things go this is the tenth time we’ve done this over the past 12 years. Of course we’ve actually done this dozens of times if you include the books and the comics too ( and the memoirs we collaborated on, ‘The Art Of Over Thinking.’ ) Every time a project is signed off on I get the low down from Ellis on how it came about.

With drinks in tow (coke zero and tea if you’re wondering ) and getting caught up on all that life stuff we soon get down to the nitty gritty.

Ellis says he hadn’t really planned on writing a new collection this year. “I’d written three collections in just over a year or so, which I was satisfied with, so I was perfectly happy if nothing came this year. Also, I’d just finished two books, did the marketing, released them, and was feeling a bit burned out on the creative side, much as I love it.”

He wasn’t interested in going over old ground either. “These days if I’m not doing something new, some new style or genre I haven’t tried before then it doesn’t feel worth the effort, I need that challenge, that spark.”

There were a couple of ideas that fell by the wayside. The first was a possible follow up to ‘On The Outside Looking In,’ “a more introspective thing but I wasn’t really in that head space.” He also toyed with the idea of continuing the folk, Celtic style of ‘All Those Years Between Us’ but felt he had nothing new in the tank in that regard.

“Coincidentally around that time I was listening to a lot of blue collar rock, Springsteen, Petty, and others like The Gaslight Anthem and Dave Hause. I’ve touched on that style before, that kind of story based and character led stuff but I’ve never pushed it harder to see where it would take me. Back in the day the aborted collection ‘Kingdom Road’ was almost that and it’s always bugged me that that never worked out.”

Q. If you‘re happy to I‘d like to name the songs on ‘The Saviours & The Songs,’ perhaps in the order they were written, and get your response. ‘American Pilgrim’ was the first off the starting block, yes?

Yeah. That was the breakthrough one this time around. After those various false starts it just flowed out one night and I knew I’d found something new to explore and it went from there. Apart from a few alterations it came out pretty much fully formed. By the way, I overheard the name Jenny Bags spoken by two people drinking on the street as I passed by and ‘American Pilgrim’ was almost the title of the collection.

Q. And the next day that flowed straight into ‘The Punks & The Preachers.’

Yep, if ‘American Pilgrim’ was an introduction of sorts then I think ��Punks …’ is more of an overview of what’s to follow. It’s snapshots really of different lives and some of the names turn up again in later songs. Like ‘American Pilgrim’ it came fast, in fact, the first five I wrote through June came pretty fast, once the damn broke it broke big ( laughs. )

Q. ‘The Modern Saints Of Babylon,’ I thought that was an interesting title.’

I have no idea where that came from, I just liked the sound of it. I don’t often do that but this time I just went with it. I have absolutely no idea what it means. ( laughs )

This one is about how much we sacrifice for family, about how far we’re willing to go and how we judge ourselves with the choices we make.

Q. ‘Across The Bridge,’ ‘Old Haunts & Memories,’ ‘Here By The Grace Of God,’ ‘Burned Out Cars’ and ‘Kings & Queens’ all share themes of looking back at younger days, that kind of idyllic view of life and how our friendships change as we grow older and life pulls us apart.

That was interesting, those common themes weren’t planned at all, it’s just the way they came out. I didn’t notice the overlap until later but I liked that they came out that way. I had another song called ‘When Were Young, When We Were Us,’ which when I looked at it wasn’t much of anything, it was just bare bones, you know, barely a sketch of a song. It had some good bits in it though which ended up in a few other songs so I guess it wasn’t a total wasted effort on my part ( laughs. )

Q. And then you switched it up a bit when you got to ‘Other Side Of The River’

One thing I noticed happening with these songs was that most of them were viewed by a narrator who’s observing others who are around them. We don’t even know who this narrator is. I didn’t intend it that way. It’s funny, I had no idea what I was going to write about with this one but once I got the first line I just knew it was about an ex - convict going home and trying to go straight and it just went from there.

Q. And the ‘The Saviours & The Songs’ shares it’s title with the collection.

One thing I knew I wanted to try when I first started dipping my toe into the whole blue collar rock side of things was to write a kind of classic anthem, well, the lyrics for one anyway ( laughs ) very much in the style of Springsteen, Petty, The Gaslight Anthem, you know, that kind of thing. Whether I was successful in that I’ll let others judge ( laughs ). I was always pretty sure it would end being the title of the collection.

Q. ‘A Poetry About These Streets and ‘Orphans & Priests’ feel like you were going for an almost cinematic feel. Would you say that’s fair?

Yeah, I guess, to a degree. I had in mind the idea that I’d like a few of the songs to have a bit more of an epic feel, something like those longer songs on Springsteen’s first few albums, with the snap shots of daily life and its colourful characters, yeah, almost a widescreen look at a kind of bygone ere. ‘Orphans & priests,’ I think, owes a particular debt to that style. ‘Poetry’ I always had in mind for the end of the collection right from the start. I’m not even really sure why that was, maybe it just felt right. Both were very long and got cut down, and I mean they really got cut down a lot. I made myself be more disciplined with the editing this time around, every line was refined to within an inch of its life. I was interested in seeing how much fat I could trim without losing the overall effect and feeling of what I was trying to convey.

Q. ‘The Contender ( ‘24 )’ wasn’t written in these recent sessions, was it?

No, it’s the oldest song here and the only one not fully written this year. It’s the only one too where the narrator is talking about himself and not simply being a bystander. ’The Contender’ goes way back to 2010 and the aborted ‘Kingdom Road’ collection. About six or seven songs from that ended up in the archive series of outtake lyrics, and for a long time I was happy with that but something about ‘The Contender’ kept nagging at me. It just felt like it hadn’t found its proper place. So, part way into this new batch of stuff I revisited it and it just seemed to fit. I’ve never revisited something in that way before so that’s new.

I think for a long time too I thought it veered a little too close to Springsteen’s ‘The Hitter’ which was the original inspiration for it, but over the years and after the rewrites I’ve seen it has its own merits.

Q. ‘Skin Of Our Teeth’

I think I was going for more of a harder edge on this one, a grittier take. It’s about how some of us just barely get through each day and it’s a small triumph when we do, without us giving into despair or turning to addiction or crime to do it. This was another one that grew out of just an opening line without me knowing where it was really going.

Q. ‘The Pauper & The Queen’

This one came out pretty late one night and is the only one that relates directly to my own life, though it can be seen more universally as well. I had the title for a while but it was going to be for something else entirely. Then, just as I was finishing writing ‘Burned Out Cars’ I found out through a friend that an old girlfriend had passed away. Well, more than a girlfriend, someone who’d been very special to me. It had been years since I’d seen her. So much time had passed but I was shocked how hard it hit me, especially as she pretty young as well.

I just needed to write down what I was feeling as any wrier does and the lyrics were pulled from that, edited and refined, but still, mostly intact.

Q. ‘Wooden Ships & Playgrounds’

It was the end of the summer when I wrote this, that feeling of summer winding down, and I was feeling wistful, and I think that seeped into the words. It’s someone talking to a loved one, a friend, a girlfriend, about how their parents suffered, about how their town is suffering, and they should do all they can not to get caught in the same old pattern. It’s about choices like a lot of these things are, do you leave, break that pattern or do you stay, live the same life your parents lived. Neither way is wrong but it’s a choice we all have to make.

Q. ‘Sally Listen, Nobody Wins’

Pretty straight forward that one, it’s about not giving up, carrying on, not letting yourself give in to despair and self defeat. A lot of tough things in life we can’t do anything about, but what we can do is do the best with what we’ve got, just get on with it and make the most of things.

Q. How do you feel now when looking back at your past collections, with there being 21 years worth that’s a fair back catalogue. We discussed this a few years ago but I wonder if your perspective has changed about what worked, what didn’t, the highs and the lows.

Well, right, I guess we should start at the beginning then. ( laughs ) First of all, and I don’t think I’ve mentioned this before, but these collections began very differently. Originally, back in 2003 my idea was just to collect them together, with my first attempt at it having 38 songs, but it was too much and with that much nothing can stand out.

I can’t even remember how the idea even came to me but one day I just had the thought of why don’t I just approach these things like an album, obviously there’s no music but I can adopt the format, with a track listing and a cover. That’s where ‘Hear The Silence’ and ‘The Human Storm’ came from. I split the whole 38 song thing in two, cut a few things, and it just worked. Looking back on those two collections now I think they stand up well considering how they were put together. I had a lot of stuff to choose from and I picked the best, that helped.

Q. So going by what you just said ‘Everything You Leave Behind’ was the first collection purposefully designed to be in an album format.

Exactly, and I think for that reason it really felt like a step forward, you know. That’s where I began to take the overall feel into consideration, like what would be the best one to open with, to end with, how one flows into the next, that way of doing it really began here.

It was also the first one to have a multi -part song. I hadn’t really considered doing that before but I was listening to Snow Patrol one day, their three part song ‘The Lightning Strike,’ and I had a light bulb moment.

Q. And a few months later that same year ‘Bullet Proof Hearts’ was released.

Yes, but a step backwards I think.

Q. How so?

( Pauses ) Well no, actually that’s probably unfair. It’s a good solid collection, there’s some great stuff there but on the whole it doesn’t really stand out. Yeah, not a step backward, but not moving forward either.

Q. So, with ‘In These Times’ did you feel you were moving forward again?

Yeah, I was happier with that one. I liked that one. I still do. I thought it had a good amount of variety on it and I felt like I was pushing myself a bit more, experimenting with different styles and subject matter. On reflection when I look at those first five I think it’s a pretty solid run, none of them are my favourites but I think they still stand up.

Q. In the past you’ve often expressed disappointment with the next three collections you released over the next two years. ‘Wake Up Call,’ ‘Heartaches & Pleasures’ and ‘After The Storm.’ Does that still hold true?

Much as I hate to say it, yep, it’s still how I feel. It’s not that I feel severely disappointed by them or anything, there’ some good stuff on them. It’s just that I didn’t feel like I was challenging myself with those, at all. They didn’t feel like anything new. As collections they’re probably the weakest I’ve done. I don’t think they’re bad as such, but maybe there’s stuff that shouldn’t have got cut and other stuff that maybe should’ve got left off. Maybe my judgement was off on what I included.

Q. ‘The Silence & The Sound’ came next, during a turbulent period in your life, you once jokingly referred to it as the start of your purple patch.

I did? Well, I’ll take your word for it ( laughs ). In all seriousness though it really was in a way, obviously I didn’t see it from that perspective at the time, but that was when I upped my game a lot I think.

Q. Was there a particular reason for that change or was it a natural process?

A bit of both I think.

Q. In what way?

Well, it was organic in so much that I’d learnt a lot over the first five years and I think I had just better learnt what worked and what didn’t, I think I had a better understanding of what my strengths were. The less organic side of it was to make something more cohesive, something that had a theme or a concept running through it, where songs shared something or were linked in some way, where it wasn’t just a collection of songs, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but that really was the first one where I thought I’d probably got it right.

Q. Does it feel like a precursor to the next few years looking back now?

Oh yeah, definitely, the genie was well out of the bottle by then. Also, around that time for the first time I was properly discovering rock operas and concept albums, listening to music by ‘The Who,’ ‘Pink Floyd and ‘Green Day’ too, which I guess opened my eyes to a different way of doing things and I wanted to see how far I could take things. I was for the first time, properly combining the prose and lyric sides.

Q. Which resulted in the strong run ‘Age Of The Restless Heart,’ ‘Songs Of All Our Yesterdays,’ ‘When The Sky Fell Down,‘ ‘Post Atomic Blues,‘ ‘The Dream Parade and ‘Kings Of Desolation Avenue,’ which was a hefty mix of concept collections and rock operas. For a time after you seemed ambivalent about the latter two.

Yeah, but I went back to them a few years later and was pleasantly surprised by what was actually there. It’s nice when that happens. I look at that run from ‘Silence’ to ‘Kings’ now and see it as some of my best stuff.

I’ve been really keen for years now to write another rock opera but something like that needs a really strong central idea and one hasn’t presented itself, I don’t know, maybe I already took it as far as it could go.

Q. For the next five years you seemed to purposefully move away from the big ideas kind of collections, moving back toward more of a subtler themed collection in what was essentially a trilogy of trilogies.

And with varying degrees of success I think. The whole trilogy of trilogies thing certainly wasn’t intended, I just wrote a hell of a lot of material during that time. I feel like maybe I wrote too much in those years or I at least released too much. I think I could have edited things better. I think I could have released less but had stronger collections. I still think they’re all pretty solid, looking back, they hang together quite well. There’s a whole lot over those nine collections I’m happy with.

Q. You worked on other projects for a while then returned with ‘Electric Hymns.’

Yeah, around that time I was looking at the 23 collections I’d written up to that point and like I said, I saw my favourites were the ones that were more cohesive, and I decided there and then that going forward I really wasn’t interested in doing another collection unless it had a theme.

I think like ‘Silence,’ ‘Electric Hymns was a precursor of what was coming.

Q. It seemed like you were building up to another new collection but it all went quiet on the lyric side of things for the next three years.

Yeah, that wasn‘t intentional at all though, I just got caught up with other stuff. ( laughs ) Actually, I think that break really befitted ‘On The Outside Looking In.’ I felt like when I came back I came back strong. It felt fresh again and I’d gathered up a nice stockpile of ideas too.

Q. Wasn’t it your intention to take another gap again after that worked out well.

Yep, then I went and wrote two collections in the same bloody year ( laughs ). I’m really happy with how ‘On The Outside’, ‘We Are Ascending,’ ‘All These Years,’ and ‘The Songs & The Saviours have come out though. It’s been a while since I’ve felt I’ve had such a good run.

Q. So, would you put them up with that period between ‘Silence’ and ‘Kings’?

I’m not sure, I think I need some more distance from them before I decide that, but if they aren‘t quite as good I don‘t think they‘re far off either.

Ellis looks out to sea as we reach the end of our look back at the last 21 years, thoughtful, as the grey sky above is broken by patches of blue.

“You know, I honestly thought I’d just write a few songs this year. I got more than that but I just really felt a need to get into it, yeah, I needed this. At the moment I see myself taking a break next year. I’ll work on other things and come back fresh.

Then again I said that last year.”

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