In his first interview in six years, former I Am Kloot singer and songwriter John Bramwell joins Headliner for a candid chat about his first new solo album in seven years The Light Fantastic, how making it has helped him overcome personal and professional loss, and why nearly three decades into his career it feels like he’s finally embarking on a fresh start…
You can listen to this interview here or read on below.
John Bramwell has made a fine art of teasing the light from the gloom. From the earliest days of his former band I Am Kloot through to the present day, his seemingly effortless ability to find beauty in the mundane has helped carve out some of the most enchanting – and, indeed, criminally underrated - music of the past 25 years. Melancholy vignettes of day-to-day life, such as Kloot classics Morning Rain, Untitled #1, Proof, and To The Brink all make for a great case in point; the storm clouds that shroud each pierced by an expertly picked out line or melody that lets just enough sunlight in to reveal their innate splendour.
When we join Bramwell via Zoom after a short delay on account of him realising he doesn’t yet have a Zoom account – his last interview stretching back to the days before most had even heard of the platform – it becomes immediately clear that the music is every inch an extension of the man himself. Before we start, he’s making light of an unfortunate set of circumstances that have pushed him temporarily out of his new home.
“I live on a canal boat now, which is quite romantic, but not at this time of year,” he says with a laugh. “I’ve rented somewhere for two weeks for rehearsals, which is what we’re doing today. I’ve been on the boat since April last year, so I’ve not experienced winter before. We had massive heavy rain during December and I didn’t shut one of the windows properly while I was away, and I returned to a swamp! So it’s a mess and I can’t go on it yet. But everyone has been very accommodating and saying it happens to everyone, but of course they’re all thinking, what a bloody idiot!”
Sporting shoulder-length white hair and a stubbly grey beard, he may appear unrecognisable to those who haven’t followed his career since the days of I Am Kloot or haven’t caught him on the road since the release of his debut solo record (2018’s Leave Alone The Empty Spaces), but that Cheshire twang, so instantly identifiable on record sounds familiar as ever. He’s self-effacing, sweet, and enthused, exuding genuine gratitude that there is still interest in the music he’s making. And that gratitude is set to be more than reciprocated by fans as he shares his first new music in nearly seven years.
Released on February 23, The Light Fantastic is described by Bramwell as “the most uplifting collection of songs” in his career. It’s an accurate description. The melodies that have defined much of his work are out in abundance, sweetened with four-part harmonies, cello, and some of the brightest, celebratory musical moments he’s ever committed to record.
The years between his debut and its follow-up haven’t, however, been easy, as he goes on to explain. But not before highlighting why he considers The Light Fantastic such an uplifting body of work.
“Primarily it comes from the friendship of the people I’m playing with,” he states. “Harriett Bradshaw plays cello and sings harmonies, Dave Fidler plays bass and does harmonies, Alan Lowles plays keyboard and does harmonies, and there’s Dave’s brother Andy on drums and harmonies. There were times in soundchecks in the last few years where we’ve just sound checked the mics all at once, and I feel like there is a real spiritual uplift about just singing with other people and finding other harmonies. That gave me a big lift.
“I wouldn’t say the last few years have been the easiest time,” he continues thoughtfully. “Both my parents passed away and I came to the end of a long relationship, and I lost most of my savings with the lockdowns, so it was actually music that has got me through a lot of things. It’s stuff that happens to all of us, I suppose. I’m not trying to be all ‘woe is me’, I’m just highlighting the healing power of music and the way it can get you through things.”
Another factor in why Bramwell has taken seven years to make a new record is his almost incessant dedication to performing live. Acting as his own booking agent, he’s made a habit of phoning venues directly and booking himself into spaces of virtually any shape or size up and down the country.
“After I Am Kloot, I decided I just wanted to go out and gig everywhere,” he says. “I got on the blower myself and rung up loads of places. We played some big gigs, like Cadogan Hall and The Ritz in Manchester, and it’s often been me and one of the others going out and playing rooms above pubs, arts centres, village halls, theatres. Luckily everyone wanted me to play at the places I phoned up! I felt like I reconvened with something and connected with my grassroots fans, and that’s given me a lift as well. And to be honest, I’ve not felt confident enough to put a record out into the wider world, but I feel like I’ve made the right decision. I feel happy. And I say that with a sceptical air [big laugh]. I think people sometimes are used to quite heavy, intense stuff from me!”
As he alludes to regularly during the course of our conversation, his relationship with his bandmates, particularly Dave Fidler, has played an integral part in helping Bramwell regain the confidence to write and release new music. In recalling how the pair first met, he explains how he felt they were almost destined to work together.
“It felt significant the day we met each other,” he says. “My girlfriend at the time and I were driving up the M6 for me to play a festival, and we stopped in the fast lane – there was a traffic jam in the fast lane, but all the other lanes were still going – and the car behind us stopped, but the one behind that didn’t. Apparently, he was doing about 100mph, so he swerved to avoid the car behind us, hit the central barrier, and bounced into us and knocked us across the other lanes of moving traffic and into the hard shoulder. It was like, flipping heck! A life flashing before your eyes moment. I remember a large lorry taking off the wing mirror of the car. Pretty mad!
“Anyway, we got to this festival and was like, shall we have a drink or what?! I did my show and the car was a write off, so we decided to stay in Manchester for the rest of the festival. And there was this other tent where we heard this guy playing and thought he was brilliant. He was playing finger style versions of Stone Roses and his own stuff, and I had just booked my first lot of gigs, so I went straight up to him and said, I don’t suppose you fancy coming on tour with me? He said yes, and he’d seen Kloot a few times. I said I had a few dates so let’s see how we get on, and now we’ve done about 300 gigs.”
The musical palette concocted by Fidler and the rest of the band has largely steered the direction taken with The Light Fantastic. While Bramwell is very much the chief songwriter, when asked about his approach to writing the record, he says the process was more about curating his material for this particular line-up.
“I’ve never really sat down and gone, apart from Kloot’s first album, this is going to be the album, it’s going to sound like this,” he elaborates. “The first song on the album is actually a song I wrote before my first album. The songs I put on this record are the ones that have suited the singing and Harriet’s cello. At any time, I have a lot of ideas on my phone and even stuff on cassettes from when I used to walk around with a Walkman. I chose the songs that I had in my bank of songs that really worked when we all played together. I do think an album should have a cohesive sound to it, so choosing the songs that worked best with this group is what gives it its cohesion. It’s not a very romantic answer that, but I just went, ‘right, what are the best songs for this lot’ [laughs]?”
On a more general note, he adds that he’s never adopted a songwriting style as such, but more an openness to taking inspiration from anywhere and everywhere.
“I have a really open-minded attitude to songwriting,” he continues. “I don’t care where it comes from as long as I get it. The main thing with writing is when you get a tiny germ of something you just need to get it down. Years ago I was at a family meal where I had to get up and leave – I wasn’t very popular! – because something popped into my head and I was off! You have to be a bit like that I feel. I like to play guitar every day, not necessarily writing, but just connecting with music. I rarely sit down to write something. It just happens.
“There’s a Kloot song called Avenue Of Hope and there is a great line it that goes ‘you’re like the clouds in my hometown, you just grow fat and hang around’, and I can say that because I didn’t write it - it was literally written on a toilet wall. I saw it and just started singing it. So, there is someone out there who wrote that! It’s a belter. It was in the Temple of Convenience in Manchester, which is a bit of a musicians’ haunt, so I thought someone might come forward and say they wrote it, but no one has. Maybe I’ll be inundated after this interview!”
One aspect of Bramwell’s work that has been a constant is his knack for melody. Despite growing up surrounded by punk and new wave, he would naturally gravitate towards, as he puts it, the less cool, poppier, more melodic records in his parents’ collection.
“I suppose I’ve always just liked melodic music,” he smiles. “The gigs I went to see as a kid was like The Dammed and Motorhead, but its probably telling that the first gig I went to was with my mum, dad, and sister to see Petula Clark when I was nine. And the first gig I went to with just my sister when I was about 13 was Wings. I’m perhaps more interested in melody than a lot of the cooler people have been. Even when new wave and punk was happening, I was still listening to Gilbert O’Sullivan who I still love.”
Awaiting the imminent arrival of his bandmates to his rented rehearsal space, our focus returns to the album and what The Light Fantastic means for Bramwell’s future. Does it represent an opening of the floodgates after a seven-year spell without releasing music? Does it draw a line under an especially difficult chapter in his life? According to him, it’s a bit more pragmatic than that.
“Making albums is great, and you’re a very lucky person if you are able to make music and put it out, but I am a person who really cares about playing live, and I think just to be able to get this album out live and play it to people is really exciting,” he says. “It’s not a very profound answer [he laughs] but I’m looking forward to the rehearsal today. Once and album is recorded I’m just thinking about how we are doing it live, and those are the versions I keep in my head. But that said, everything else almost seems like another life, and it feels like a real fresh start. Not that there was anything wrong with the past, but there comes a point where you have to start afresh. And that’s what this is.”
PHOTOS: Anthony Harrison