Softly spoken self-proclaimed Famous Poet has packed in rather a lot for a 22 year old. His band Eastern Lane released two highly rated albums on Rough Trade before disbanding at just 19 years old. Since then he’s moved from Scotland to Brighton (“It makes it harder to come up with something different, which is a good challenge to have,” he says.) and embraced a quieter, stripped back life of acoustic guitars and clever wordplay. “If the ocean was made out of gin, maybe I would learn how to swim,” he sings on his solo album. Well, quite.
Why did Eastern Lane call it a day?
We started the band when we were 13 or 14 and we got signed when we were 15. We did two albums for Rough Trade and after the second one they didn’t want to do any more. We got some money off a few different labels and recorded another one but everyone else in the band decided they wanted to go to university cos we were only 19 by then.
You used to be a bit of a howler but now your lyrics are quite delicate. Did you want to get away from that style?
I wanted to change, reinvent myself. Part of it’s growing up.
Did it feel like starting again when you went solo?
Yeah, I’d never done any gigs on my own before so I was pretty scared. Eastern Lane were pretty loud. When you’re standing on your own it’s pretty scary, but I got over it by shouting poems at the audience.
Poetry’s quite divisive, isn’t it?
It’s pretty frowned upon. If a proper poet listened to the poems or saw me perform live I think they’d be pretty pissed off at it being called poetry to be honest. It’s more like ranting. It is quite frowned upon, but I don’t see why it should be. If you do it well I don’t see what the problem is.
How do you decide what’s going to be a poem and what’s going to be lyrics to a song?
Usually the poems come more from a story. I can tell quite easily if it’s going to fit into a song due to the detail of the lyrics. It comes down to what I’m trying to talk about.
There’s a lot of humour in your stuff as well as stark emotion. Do the two ever counteract each other?
Yeah, but I think that should be in everything – a mixture of the good and the bad really. It’s not as if everybody always feels the same all the time so you might as well mix it up.
You talk a lot about life being an uphill struggle. Do find life hard work?
Yeah, sometimes. I think everybody does. You just always hope that there’s going to something at the top of the hill. As long as you have a laugh on the way though.
What’s your night Soapbox Club all about?
it’s something I started this year in Soho in a little bar. We get a wooden soapbox to stand on and play, and invite friends along, usually people I really enjoy like storytellers and poets and musicians, everything. We’ve done a few in Fitzherberts. It’s a bit of a hoedown, nothing serious.
