I’ve read that your time as a touring choirboy influenced your music, I hear those roots so strongly in In Another Life. How do you feel that sound has carried into this new chapter of your life?
I think that it'll always be with me, you know? I started when I was nine years old, so I was just a little, little guy, and I sang in the choir for four years. It just really transformed the way I looked at myself and my relationship with music. I remember this phase I had of bringing sheet music to school and not understanding why people thought that was kind of weird. You know, like, why is this guy carrying around sheet music? Everything that I love about the things that I do now, all of those pieces sort of carried that same intensity. I think our tastes in things are almost genetic, at least in my experience. Each of us are drawn towards art or music or whatever. And for me, it's always been that high emotion, tear-jerking kind of music.
How do you feel working with others affects your style and voice?
For me, it's always been really positive. I generally get everything to a close point for myself, and then I find someone to sort of co-produce the finishing touches. But my co-producer Andrew Sarlo was just huge on this one. It had been so long since I put anything out, so I developed this overwhelming feeling of self-doubt to the point of just not being able to finish anything. Andrew came in and injected a sense of confidence in me. It was such a big moment for me to find this person who understood what I was trying to do and knew how to pull it out of me. I spend a lot of time by myself as an artist, so I don’t feel my most confident when collaborating. That's something that I'm hoping to improve on in the future. With this album, my friend Ro and Brita both played the strings. And my friend Dominick does sound healing baths here in LA, so I had him come into the studio, and we spent the entire day tracking him over every song. It created this hidden energy throughout the record that I think is really cool.
So Andrew Sarlo pulled this album out of you, how did you make that connection and why did he make the cut?
I had been trying to find the right person to work with and was not finding someone who felt right for this album. My management suggested Andrew and I started looking at the records that he had produced, and they were all like my favorite records. So I was like, well now I need to meet this guy! He had done all of the Big Thief records, and he had done Nick Hakim's debut record, which I really loved. So we just met up here in LA, and it was just this strange feeling. We almost look like brothers, so right off the bat, we were just like, "This is kind of bizarre." We just really clicked, and we talked about the songs that I had sent him, and he gave me his honest critique. He wasn't scared to give me feedback, which I thought was a brave thing to do in a first meeting. I put a lot of faith in him pretty quickly, and I’m so happy I did, because Andrew saved it for me.
On "Weightless," you collaborated with Sapphire Adizes. He’s known for his roots in classical and jazz. What do you feel he brought to the song?
We only really had a day together when we did that song, but he’s just such a skilled piano player and had a fountain of ideas. He was really fun to work with, and we blended nicely, because we were in kind of a yin-and-yang situation. He’s just this bundle of incredible energy. I move at a much different pace, and I find myself in that position a lot when I do co-writes. It’s like I'm the turtle, and everyone else seems to be the hare, which is a good combination.
I loved your music videos for "Weightless," "Set Me Free" and "All Eyes On Me." Are you planning on releasing more videos from this album?
There's a video for the title track that is sort of a continuation of the "Weightless" video. It's actually my favorite video so far. It's really beautiful. And then there's an additional video that's coming out a little bit later for "Color Me," which is directed by this really great director Martin de Thurah, who has done some great work you’ve probably seen like the James Blake’s "Retrograde" video, some stuff for Fever Ray and a bunch of other cool artists. I was involved pretty heavily in all of them up until Martin’s video. He's a friend who I've been asking to do something with forever, honestly. I sent him the song very early on, like years ago, and he said he’d love to do it. I just told everyone on my team like, "Don't worry, just let him do his thing, and it will be magical." This is the first record where I've done a video on my own, which is for the second single, and it was really exciting. It felt almost like the first time I made a song in a lot of ways. So I just—I filmed it all, and I jumped into iMovie. It was like I was making it my first song in GarageBand or something, and it was really invigorating. I was just so excited the whole time. Everything was exciting to me and new. I've had a lot of fun making these little vignettes for the new songs that are coming out. And I think I might do another video for a separate song eventually.
After the album drops, how are you planning to celebrate?
Oh man, I'd love to be out of quarantine... but I know that's not the case. I don't know. Maybe I'll just order a bottle of champagne from Instacart or something. We’ll see.
Do you have any advice for other creatives who are trying to put out content right now?
Try not to be too precious with your work. I think that has been my biggest learning curve. Your whole career as an artist will be you letting go of things, especially in the sort of moment that we are in now. I think people really enjoy the more, almost like off-the-cuff, not amateur—but you know, people want to see a little bit without it being too pristine, you know what I mean? So I would say try to be a little bit less precious with your work.
