In a genre that has been re-kindled with the meteoric rise of Ben Howard, Tom Odell, and Ed Sheeran and found critical acclaim on both sides of the pond, Luke Sital-Singh is making waves. Offering a slightly calmer, less overtly earwormy sound than the above mentioned, Singh’s telephone voice is as gentle as the singing on his accoustic driven records. The chink of coffee cups and tea spoons offers an almost foley-like backdrop to the cheery hello that follows a couple of rings.
“I’m sitting in a coffee shop near my house, because I have no signal at home which is annoying. Generally, I’m putting finishing touches on my album. It’s been a quiet year but it’s starting to gear up now.”
The gearing up is, if one is avoiding comparisons with the already substantiated success of Damien Rice, an understatement. Releasing three EPs in the space of a year, the London native and current resident has recently been signed to Parlaphone with much of their work already done. With the first EP Fail For You having reached No. 3 in the iTunes singer-songwriter charts, No. 1 on Bandcamp and featuring on the 6 Music Playlist, second single ‘Bottled Up Tight’ garnered the complimentary quality of “breathing life into a tired form”. Despite falling short of emulating Michael Kiwanuka’s success in 2012, Singh’s 3rd EP Tornados paved the way for a place on the BBC Sound of 2014 longlist. Now firmly established, a debut album is well on the way and a UK tour scheduled for February.
The other underplayed detail of Singh’s conversational opener is perhaps equally as significant. The London coffeeshop across from the London house, a house which provides a creative space for his wife-come-album-art-creator, forms a pleasing backstory as well as aural backdrop for Singh. Whether lamentably or otherwise, image and solo-artist success go hand in hand and with his seemingly effortless nailing of geek chic and tall, dark and handsome, Singh most definitely has the former. The extent of solo-artist success however, will be determined less by cheekbones than by the album.
“All the songs are written now. Other people may disagree but I think it is really. The issue at the moment is too many songs and deciding which ones to choose. Labels seem to like to biding their time but next week we’re recording.” To say the end product of this process is hotly anticipated is no hyperbole. Radio 1 playtime does not come easily to unsigned acoustic artists and if this doesn’t give credence to the often raw, more often beautiful style Singh has made his own, then the conceptual mastery of an EP inspired by a Channel 4 tornado documentary surely does. In much the way that he is looking to defy accusations of genre saturation, Singh is eager to dispel notions of pressure.
“In some ways I do feel it but for the most part writing still feels organic. Suddenly when you sign to a label you welcome in the opinions of a lot more people so that’s a different thing to get comfortable with. It’s been pretty good going though. You hear lots of horror stories of people who sign to record labels and have to change and end up making awful music. But that really hasn’t been my experience. They’ve just encouraged me to keep doing what I’m doing.”
Beyond making an increasing number of on-point girls swoon, on what exactly it is that he’s doing Singh is remarkably candid. “Part of the fun of performing live is making people cry. Usually I sing with my eyes closed so don’t often look at people whilst they are. A few times people have come up to me after gigs and told me they have cried and I wonder what it would feel like watching them; whether I’d feel guilt or internally laugh. It’s such a weird thing actually making people cry, almost on purpose. It feels like I’m being honest but at the same time it’s an act, I’m not actually feeling those emotions on stage. If I was I’d be a wreck. I really enjoy the trickery of performing; knowing how and when to make my voice crack. It is a performance. I’m performing emotions. But when it’s really connecting and really going well it doesn’t feel fake. Other times I’ll be doing a gig and I’m not into it and in my head I’m just thinking about episodes of Sherlock I’ve got to watch at home on iPlayer. Hopefully it’s still convincing but in my head i’m somewhere else. I’ve never actually cried on stage, but it could happen one day.”
If this is truly the case or a piece of flippancy akin to Singh’s suggestion that ‘there’s not a lot of thinking’ involved in his writing, the end result does not suffer. Now performing live with a bunch of old friends, Luke Sital-Singh concerts are reminiscent of Villagers’ in their pitch perfect shift between built up versions and solo moments. The end result of the band’s quickly acquired musical tightness, Singh’s swift creative process and the slight sadistic feelings he has for audiences is an increasingly rare, raw believability. “I don’t listen to that much music and whilst I don’t want to put my foot in it, there aren’t that many singer-songwriters around at the moment who I believe. It’s a very subtle thing. I’ve been really getting into Nick Drake recently and there’s something in his vocal performance that makes me believe every single word of it. I’d love to be one that people did believe.”
Whether you do buy into Singh’s performance will likely be determined by the more intimate, personal experiences that can be had equipped with his records and a recently terminated relationship or bleak sunday afternoon. Undeniably being force fed illustrative descriptions and comparisons of music is annoying, but the watery eyed result of ‘Nothing Stays The Same’ is as inevitable as Drake’s slight reconfiguring of ‘Take Care’. On the topic of how this is achieved Singh is typically unassuming and self-deprecating. “I don’t really have one way of writing that works. It mostly consists of staring at a wall and then procrastinating. But when it’s working, it just sort of happens. To anyone looking it would seem like the easiest thing in the world because it just all tumbles out really quickly. It’s suddenly so easy one day and then impossible the next.
“Recently I’ve been doing a lot of writing with other people. I hated the idea of collaborating at first and I have had a couple of awkward ones, but when you find people you trust who understand what you’re trying to do it’s actually quite easy. When you collaborate it’s not as hard to maintain a work effect. You can’t just go and watch TV. You go home and you’ve got a new song and it feels good. There’s a satisfaction in feeling like you have a real job and getting up at 11 and going home at 6. In fairness, that’s not really a job but it does make me feel respectable.”
Feeling respectable, releasing an album and playing live shows with some of his oldest friends, if he weren’t so goddamn good at making music he’d be very hateable.