DAVID OOI INTERVIEWS GUILLEMOTS FRONTMAN TURNED SOLO ARTIST FYFE DANGERFIELD BEFORE HIS LONDON GIG PROMOTING HIS NEW ALBUM, FLY YELLOW MOON
What’s your creative process like?
It’s a mixture of moments of spontaneity and having to sort of work at things and I am not very good at the working things bit. I’m trying to work on being very good at that.
I tend to be quite impulsive in the way that I write, a lot of the stuff just comes out very suddenly and sort of at random moments. I improvise a lot, by myself and with the Guillemots all the time we write stuff, we’re improvising. I am sort of concerned with the way we do improvise that something very true happens and we can then sort of work on it too much and lose that atmosphere that was there originally, and with Fly Yellow Moon that was kind of the thing of this record, the majority of it was sort of spontaneous and not entirely finished when it got to the studio, I like that because you can sort of hear, certainly ones like “So Brand New”, (the) second track, ones like that it really almost was the first time I really sung it, like “Faster Than the Setting Sun”, we decided to have a run through, so Jamie started playing and we got to the end and we were like “Err…., were you recording that?” and he was like “Yeah! That’s alright.” It’s lovely like we’d never played it through before, and that was what we used for the record. I really liked that because I think you get something quite genuine that maybe you don’t get. There are benefits of playing the song for months and then recording it but with this record it was sort of just about capturing moments.
Love seems to be a recurring theme in your work, is there a reason for that?
It is and it isn’t. It’s weird because it does feel like an album with a lot of that in it but when you actually go through and listen to the lyrics it’s only really the first three tracks that are sort of actually what you could call love songs really, and then after that the other songs like “High on the Tide” is about getting away and trying to get your head straight, “Faster Than the Setting Sun” is sort of after an argument and quite a fraught song, “Firebird” and “Don’t Be Shy” is all sort of introspective. I’m trying to push for something more in terms of what you write, but you can only write what naturally comes out. It wouldn’t really sit right if I tried to write, unless it comes out at the moment of anger or something like that. It’s just not what I’m good at, I think I tend to write in quite a romantic way and it’s not necessarily quite the same as writing about love. It’s to do with the way I just sort of tend to be quite gushy in the way that I write songs, it’s just how it comes out. I don’t really know why, but I just tend to get very touched by music.
To a degree of course you tend to write from experience. You use what’s happened in your life and you put that into the stuff you do. But it’s not like, “this is a love song for this”. A lot of songs I trace back to certain moments but it doesn’t mean it’s about that moment I sort of have an idea in my head about what I am writing about and sometimes I don’t. Like a track like “Firebird” on the record I don’t really know what’s that about, I just woke up one night, couldn’t sleep, heard a tune, and then you just find the lyrics and it just comes out I’m not really sure exactly what it’s about but you’re aware of a sort of feeling in the air and you sort of capture that thing.
Do you have to work hard at the lyrics, to get it right?
Well no, you don’t have to work that hard. Generally it comes out quickly, it depends, sometimes some of it will come out but then you need to work at the rest of it. Something like “Firebird” sort of came out in like 20 minutes.
Do you have a favourite track in the album?
Genuinely proud of the whole thing, maybe like “So Brand New” is like my favourite track, just really fun to record, I just like the way it sound but I just like the whole thing.
Is there anything you would like to explore in the future, musically?
God yeah, there’s a million things I want to explore. I feel like I’ve only just begun I want to really makes groundbreaking original music but at the same time I love writing song, that’s the thing with this record I’d rather try to do something that’s really out there, something very traditional and focused that just fitted how I felt. I also really want to start writing lots of instrumental music, really want to get into film soundtracks, I want to start writing pop songs for other people, I want to write more classical music.
Has your music evolved?
I definitely think it has evolved, and I think probably my standards are higher so that now maybe what I think is a shit song I would have thought was good five years ago. It’s weird also how some things, certain sounds and certain call patterns; like I remember how 10 years ago I can just sit there playing that bit. And that’s the thing, some of those things that make me feel something, sometimes I wish I didn’t, because I am a total sucker for quite cheesy records and certain changes that just bring out this sort of emotion and you could say that that’s just too easy but I mean it’s what I naturally find myself doing and I think you can’t be too contrived and try to be something you’re not too much, it would just seem a bit false I think.
Is there anything you would like to go back and change?
Don’t think so, there plenty that I think I’ve done, that we’ve done in Guillemots that I think could’ve been better or that we didn’t do that right, but I don’t wish we could go back and change. There’s stuff that we’ve done that I am really proud, and I’m happy with the way everything’s gone, *smiling*. It’s not something I think about too much, i was talking about this last night, about how the tiniest moment has this massive impact on your life, like when I met Greig and the Guillemots, it was only because me and him both got dragged, me by my brother and him by his partner to go and watch this weird comedy programme that they were both taking part in and neither of us wanted to go, and we both got sort of “Come on, you’ve got to come and support me.” and we both met.
And you trace that point to that tiny little decision and that had such a massive influence on so many people’s life, like my life, his life you connect to the rest of the band, and the people that work with the band and all this things come out from this one tiny and anything could’ve happened, I could have gone a different way and something else could’ve happened, you just never know. But I don’t sort of look back on my life and think, “I wish I hadn’t done that”, it doesn’t mean like there are things that you look back and think: “I could have seen how I could have done that differently and maybe that would have been a bit more sensible,” but there is a difference between thinking that and actually wishing it. I think I would only really regret things if I didn’t think I had tried my hardest at the time and I know I have, I know that with the Guillemots, I know that with both the Guillemots albums. Whether or not there are things I think are right or wrong, now, I know at that time though, I just did my best. I know with this album I did my best and I think as long as you think that, you haven’t got any cause to regret anything, I would say.
This album seems ‘a step out of this place and time’, would you say that?
It’s certainly a very ‘unfashionable’ sounding record. It doesn’t sound like a kind of cool modern thing at all, I think what it is, is that, it sort of sounds timeless but not retro. I didn’t want it to sound like it was trying to be old but I didn’t want it to sound like it was trying to be new either.
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