Newton's Law

Newton Faulkner counts himself among those who were somewhat surprised when third album Write It On Your Skin beat hip hop’s newest megastar Frank Ocean to the top of the UK album charts upon its release in July. Faulkner may be notoriously humble, but the hype machine that powered Ocean’s admittedly excellent Channel Orange record seemed destined to steer it to the summit. Does the dreadlocked virtuoso’s triumph offer proof that ‘acoustic singer/songwriter’ isn’t such a stuffy tag after all?

“There is that instant thought”, Faulkner begins, “when you think ‘singer/songwriter’, of somebody standing on stage – actually, not even standing, sitting down – and telling you about how they feel. If that’s not an over-exaggeration! That’s obviously not what I do as I’m pretty chirpy at the best of times. It’s a weird one though, because if you go back, there are so many people you could think of as singer/songwriters but aren’t. You don’t think of someone like David Bowie like that but that’s essentially what he is. It’s a very wide-spanning thing.
“I did the London Acoustic Guitar Festival recently and that was really interesting because there are so many incredible players around at the moment. The playing itself has just kicked off to the max, which really wasn’t part of it before. It was like the instrument was a songwriting tool but not an instrument in its own right, which it very much has become. It’s amazing and definitely more fun too. I was listening to instrumentalists before I started writing so I had a huge respect for the guitar and its versatility and the amount of sounds that you could make on it. I knew that there was a lot more to it than just strumming chords.”
Something of a wizard when it comes to his instrument, Faulkner is forever looking to innovate. A common misconception is that he relies on loop stations and backing tracks, such is his ability to make an acoustic guitar sound like it’s doing several impossible things all at once. Alas...
“I’ve never done it!” he laughs. “People seem to think I have because of everyone around me! The stuff that I do usually happens all at the same time so the percussion is built into the guitar part while you’re playing everything else. It’s more technically challenging in that it’s much harder to get to the same point [than using a loop station] but it also gives you a lot more freedom further down the line because you can speed up and slow down and change things as you go along, which you can’t when you’re looping. But yeah, I’ve never done it. I felt like I’d missed the loop train when I saw KT Tunstall do it. I was like, ‘She’s nailed that!’. I was kind of doing my own thing by that point anyway. It’s more of a playing style than an equipment usage thing with me.”
So it’s essentially a case of being too damn good for your own good?
“I guess so!” he laughs. “ t sounds bad but I can make a lot of noise and people do get confused. There was one lady in particular who came up to me after a show and told me she thought that I was using backing tracks and I was like, ‘Okay, just hang on two seconds’, and I went and got a guitar and played one of the guitar parts from the gig, just right in front of her, not plugged in… and she went very quiet, looked a bit sheepish and said, ‘Can I have a hug?’ It’s a weird thing in that it’s not something that many people do. It’s definitely never been a part of popular culture so people are still getting used to it as a style of music. I know people that are really into the songs and have no idea what I’m doing on guitar and actually don’t really care! They just think it sounds nice. But for the hardcore guitar people, it’s quite an extreme area.”
Faulkner has something of a personal relationship with his hand-crafted Nick Benjamin guitars, warmly noting that he’s “known them all since they were bits of wood” and often lining a row of them up onstage at gigs, provding both a nice visual and quick access to different tunings. The live show played a huge part in the formation of Write It On Your Skin, with Faulkner keen to bridge the gap between the studio and his audience.
“I didn’t really write for the live arena in the past,” he admits. “With the second album, I was very much writing a record, which I think is the big difference. I can’t remember who gave me this advice but I’d like to find them and punch them. Someone a very long time ago said, ‘You should never write to play live, you shoud always write records’, and that’s what I did in the past, particularly around the time of Rebuilt By Humans. With this record, it was written with quite specific types of gigs in mind. It’s very festival-based.
“Sonically, I wanted to recreate the vibe of the live show, but without it being purely live because I’m not sure it would work for radio if I just stuck a mic in front of me at a gig. Maybe if it was the right arrangement and the right recording, I could get away with that – which I’d love to try and do – but for this album at this stage, people felt they needed a full Radio 1-style thing. Whether they were right or wrong, I guess you’ll never find out! It’s always interesting. You have to play the game to a certain degree and I’ve played it a little bit. Not as much as I have done in the past. It’s tricky. I juggle a huge amount of balls. Wait, that sounds bad. Is that gonna be the quote up the top? ‘Newton Faulkner comes out!’ How very Frank Ocean of me. What were we talking about? Balls?”

Write It On Your Skin is out now. Newton Faulkner comes to the Dublin Olympia on October 7.