Ask Charlie Gradon how a song finds its shape and he'll tell you the trick is getting out of its way.
Heathrow, the first single from his second album Pain Game, only fell into place once he stopped forcing it – he’d caught Welsh songwriter Cate Le Bon live, tried to bottle what she does, and struck out again and again until he quit trying.
“It never works for me that way. I’ll get inspired by an artist and subconsciously recreate ideas of theirs and have to just stop,” he says. “It’s only when I try to tell a story does a song really allow itself to work.”
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That instinct – narrative first, imitation never – runs right through the new record. Pain Game plays like a shuffled hand of memories drawn from a single relationship, each track dealt as a card in a game of love. The concept arrived early, with the title cut.
“The original idea came early on when I wrote the song titled ‘pain game’. It struck me as an interesting way to describe love and the wide range of emotions you experience when ‘playing’,” he explains. “Then as songs started to come through, I’d imagine how and where they would fit in to the game. For each song I wrote a little explainer as to how it affects you in the game.”
Road Signs, for one, reads like the fine print on the back of a card: “The road signs card represents a fork in the road. Hard truths, awkward silences, unresolved arguments. If you do not heed the signs, your time in the game may be over.”
Pulling from lived memory can leave a mark, though – not least on the people who wander into the lyrics.
“It’s tough on the people around me, and a fine line to walk when balancing telling your story or someone else’s,” Gradon says. “Often my partner will only realise how I feel about something once I’ve put it into a song. Once I learnt how to write songs it became the outlet for understanding the word and social interactions.”
He handled production and the mix alone this time, hunting a very particular ghost in the machine.
“I suffered heavily from demoitis. Which is when you try to recreate the magic of a demo but can’t. So my dream all along was to be able to capture that initial magic at a high quality so I can release it.”
The reward is unvarnished creation; the catch is knowing when to walk away. As he puts it, “it does also become very difficult to put an end date on a record. I end up just going into the sessions and moving things around depending on how I’m feeling which doesn’t help at all.” His fix is blunt: “I’ve learnt to get to a point, set a date and when I get there that’s what it’s going to be.”
None of this comes with a grab for the spotlight. Gradon’s audience has built up quietly across a run of EPs, and he’s more than content to keep it that way.
“It suits me and my life. I’m not looking to take over the world, I just have to make music and I feel privileged there are people out there that genuinely understand and listen.”
Where the calm gives way is on stage. He brings Pain Game to Cactus Room in Thornbury on 2 October, and going by his other gig, sitting still isn’t in the cards – Gradon keeps time in psych outfit Turtle Skull, but fronting a show rewires him completely.
“The energy goes way up. As much as I’d like to, I cannot control myself once I’m surrounded by noise. It sets me off and gives me the freedom to lose my shit,” he says. “People are used to seeing it happen when I’m in Turtle Skull behind the kit, but it’s very freeing being able to move around!”
Grab tickets here.
