When we tell future generations about lockdown, they probably won’t believe us.
Or at the very least, accuse us of exaggerating: so you’re saying you couldn’t leave the house, like normal? 8pm curfew? 5 kilometre radius? And this went on for months at a time?
We don’t need the recap right now, as we’re all still processing that very recent reality. While everyone was affected, it’s no secret that performing artists were hit especially hard. With his personal brand of alternative roots rock, Melbourne-based singer-songwriter Joshua Batten had been happily and consistently gigging. Averaging at least two shows each week, his audience has been steadily growing since his debut EP Searching For Answers was released in 2017, earning it a spot in the Top 20 on the Australian Blues & Roots Airplay Chart.
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So for Batten, lockdown not only ground his live work to a halt – it brought with it anxiety, grief, anger, nostalgia, and fear of the unknown. However, the experience had an upside in that it also resulted in his latest album, Learn To Live Again. Using the pandemic as the backdrop, Learn to Live Again is a concept album featuring an eclectic mix of songs that tells a cohesive story about the challenges and acceptance of mental health and neurodiversity. For the first time in Batten’s career, he’s chronicling his experience as a working musician on the Autism Spectrum.
“I’ve always tried to write about personal experiences and make them universally relatable,” he says, implicitly referring to his full-length debut album, 2020’s The City Within, which included the singles ‘Hollywood Blues’ and ‘At the End of The Day’, which reached the Top 10 on the Australian Country Radio Chart.
“This is kind of taking that to the next level by almost flipping on its head a universal experience – that being the two years that we’ve that we’ve all gone through – and really given an account of my own response,” he says.
“For the first couple of years, I didn’t talk about my Autism. I didn’t want to because a. I thought I wasn’t good enough and b. I didn’t want it to overshadow the musicality, but now I think I’ve reached a point where mental health needs to be discussed in the mainstream,” he explains.
Not only is Batten delving into this side of his life through the new album, which is released on October 3, one week before Mental Health Awareness Day, he’s also premiering a live show as part of Melbourne Fringe Festival from October 13 to 16.
Taking place at the MC Showroom in Prahran, the Learn to Live Again stage version will be performed in a semi-acoustic format, where he’ll be joined by multi-instrumentalists Franca Locandro and Ayden Gadsden.
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Batten says the trio will be rotating instruments – acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass and keyboards – throughout each show, but without a drummer there’ll be some “inventive ways of adding percussion”. The songs will be interspersed with monologues, detailing the meaning behind each song.
“The lyrics are first and foremost, the story is first and foremost, so in a sense, it’s almost beneficial to not have these loud guitars and loud drums overpowering everything. Because if you’ve come to the show, and you haven’t heard the album, then over the course of the hour, you’ll still understand the story and understand where I’m coming from,” he says.
While lockdown prevented Batten from gigging in venues, like many creative artists he turned to the virtual realm, live-streaming weekly for almost nine months which not only expanded his audience internationally, it laid the groundwork for this concept album. “I loved doing that because it also enabled me to play songs that I would normally never get to play in my original sets or in my pub sets,” he says.
Reconnecting with all his musical heroes in this way, and having been inspired by going on a progressive rock cruise in America and meeting fellow music fans from around the world, Batten knew he wanted to “go further and explore” with this album, which is his most revealing and ambitious work to date.
“I grew up with albums and that’s what I love. I wanted to try and do something that actually has enough variety to make it worthwhile,” he says of what he sees as being his “love letter” to the musical artists who have shaped him.
“It’s also largely a massive thanks to Creative Victoria and the COVID relief grants they did at the end of 2020, which was what really gave me the determination to actually put this together as a story, as a whole concept, and give it a narrative and fill in the gaps,” he explains.
For Batten, ahead of the release of the album and the Melbourne Fringe shows, his main hope is as it always is when he writes music – that it connects. “I had an interview last night, actually, where we went through the album track by track, and it just hit me just how much has gone into this, and how much potential there is for people to relate to it and understand it.”
Catch his album launch at Melbourne Fringe Festival, from October 13 to 16. Grab your tickets by heading here.
