May
14
10.59am

FRANK TURNER // Folk-Rock’s Lion Hearted


The new album from English singer-songwriter Frank Turner, Be More Kind, has a lot to take away – angst, questions, elements of clarity, more angst and more questions – it’s a social narrative but also very much a Frank Turner narrative. This theme wasn’t Turner’s original intention, however.

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“I don’t tend to write concept albums and there is a fair amount of subject massaging to make the album feel more thematic,” he says. “I was in the middle an ever so slightly directionless piece of writing, a concept album about women from the historical record who had been ignored.

“It’s not that I’ve changed my mind about that, I will write about that at some point, but then, 2016 happened. We need to talk about 2016.”

Turner is referring to the beginning of the end, when in that year the political upheaval and tumultuous standards we have in society today first surfaced. “I was in tour in the US with Flogging Molly in the summer of 2016, whilst this Trump debacle was in full swing – I’m a huge fan of America and indeed, a defender of America.

“All of a sudden, it felt like America collectively gave into a lot of its worst instincts and that was disheartening. These songs started arriving because of that and now we have Be More Kind.”

“It was interesting to me to start writing songs about this stuff simply because I had things I wanted to write and if nothing else, suggest to me a purity in intention, internally I felt comfortable that this was something I had to do.”
[FRANK]

It could be argued that a lot of today’s socio-political discrepancies stemmed from America and the events of 2016, and a lot of the best music we’ve had released in the last two years comes from that country and addressed those issues. Turner takes his perception and opinion of what’s gone on to give it his own soundtrack. “Taking things that happen around me and translating them is what I do and has been for a very long time.

“Songwriting as a reaction to external stimulus and things happening around me is very much instinctive to me now. The difference this time around, I quite happily left clinically songwriting behind me a couple of albums ago. I took a private decision not to engage with that stuff anymore.

“It was interesting to me to start writing songs about this stuff simply because I had things I wanted to write and if nothing else, suggest to me a purity in intention, internally I felt comfortable that this was something I had to do.”

Naturally with an accelerated focus on thematic narrative and indeed, the music itself and doing something that has pushed Turner further than his previous releases, come challenges in taking this album to the live stage. Turner has not made it easy for himself with 120 dates already announced for his upcoming world tour. “Why do things by halves?” he jokes.

Executing such a powerful release will prove challenging because of the statements it makes in its sound. “The main thing is my crew are amazing and long-suffering when I come up with these ideas! The previous album was quite subconsciously based in sonic entrenchment – I wanted to make an album that sounded like me and the band playing. Everything was stripped back for that one.

“’Let’s do something different this time around.’ I had a rule with the new material for this album that we weren’t allowed to work on arrangements in sound check, we were just going to get to the studio with the songs I had written, raw, naked entities, and see where they would go and use the studio as a tool, something I’ve not really tried to do in the past, to use the studio as a documentation board, as an instrument.”

Turner was deliberately trying to push himself out of his comfort zone, intentionally attempting to bring different musical and technological influences to the album. “It was fun and engaging to do that,” he says. “Obviously how we’ll present that live is challenging! There are songs on there with three drum kits playing at the same time and I have but one drummer! Skilful as he is, he has two hands.”

In his performances around the world, Turner will in a sense be documenting the various reactions and situations of different people in different countries. “I very deliberately meant to play for people across the world,” he says. “I try to be careful about making statements about what I want the world to be like – my audience are self-selecting to a degree.

“The thing I try to do outside of being in the moment on stage is to listen. I think that’s an important thing to do, is to shut the fuck up for a minute and listen to what someone has to say.”



 



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