Jack the lad

Jack Fabian Peñate can be more than a little philosophical when he wants to be.

Take this, for starters:- “The common theme of my lyric writing is me trying to turn around things which could eat me up and make me feel depressed and sad. But if you think about them enough you can turn them about and make them actually somehow kind of positive.”
This is just one of a handful of thought-provoking remarks during what is a vastly enjoyable conversation with the 23-year-old Londoner. Dressed in one of his many plaid shirts (today it’s green), with a small black cap barely covering a massive fringe, Peñate is in Dublin’s Sugar Club gearing up for a performance that is just hours away, on a weekend that’s incredibly important to him. Matinée - his highly anticipated debut album, a collection of songs further displaying the young man’s ska-inflected indie-pop – has just been released.
Amiable, interesting, and pleasantly high-spirited, Peñate is willing to discuss pretty much anything I throw at him, especially when the topic of his ‘LDN is a Victim’ comes up. The track pokes fun at the current London “singer-songwriter” clique which Lily Allen, Kate Nash (and now Peñate) have been slung into. Mixed by an unknown DJ, it combines Allen’s ‘LDN’ and Kate Nash’s ‘Caroline is a Victim’ to form its own title. Oh, and Mr. Peñate’s name just happens to pop up.
“I think it’s hilarious!” testifies its creator. “I think you can’t take yourself seriously, and what I do is fun and someone else is trying to have fun too. It’s flattering to feel that people have done enough, like there’s enough kids in London doing shit that someone can write a whole song on it! And you know, they’re right, people need to be brought down a bit. The people who need to be brought down are the ones who don’t like it, and I don’t need to be brought down ‘cos hopefully I don’t have that kind of ego. I find it funny, man.”
Peñate has been making splashes in the singles charts with the Top Ten success of arguably his most likeable number, the tragic but quirky ‘Torn on the Platform.’ Now, Matinée looks set to propel Peñate’s star even higher, so how does he react to the sudden fame? “It’s something which I obviously don’t mind,” Jack ruminates, “because otherwise I wouldn’t be a musician, but it’s something I try not to take in too much. I don’t try and think about who knows who I am and stuff like that. I spend all my time on tour, and it’s just like we’re a bunch of blokes going about. The only time I really see the kind of fame thing is at gigs really. There isn’t a huge amount of it, so to tell the truth, it doesn’t bother me because I’m not that big. It’s not like you’re talking to Madonna!”
A little extra research can go a long way, and when discussing how Peñate relaxes when he’s not playing shows every night, I mention a little computer game called Guitar Hero; a game which he’s chronically addicted to, according to an account I’d read in a newspaper two days previously.
His face lights up. “How did you know?!” squeaks Peñate, before his band mates suddenly join in on the conversation.
“That’s fresh man!” they shout. “Yeah, we got addicted to it in the van for this tour,” says Peñate, still smiling. “That were obsessive! But I’m not really the person to kind of like wind down and have a cup of tea! Even if I’m at home, I’m always like pottering about, fiddling with something or just doing stuff.”
So, is this music business something that Peñate would like to be a part of for the rest of his life? “Yeah, I’ll do it for the next 40 years,” he replies. Better find new ways to relax then…

Matinee is out now on XL