![]() “If someone else is doing it with you, it’s a lot easier to draw a veil over my insecurities,” he explained. Working with other musicians allowed Weeks to hear what he’d been working on with fresh ears. ![]() Other artists that appear on the record include Heavenly Recordings signee Katy J Pearson, Willie J Healey and Frank Ocean collaborator Ben Reed. “That’s an unbelievable song,” he said of the latter, “and felt like how I wanted the record to feel.” “For the purposes of this record, I felt like the music that Nathan introduced me to was suddenly my new favourite record or new favourite song.”Īmong the tracks that the producer introduced – or reintroduced – Weeks to were John Cale’s ‘Never Give Up’, Prefab Sprout’s ‘When Love Breaks Down’ and Wings’ ‘Arrow Through Me’. ![]() “We achieved that kind of musical language of what one person means when they’re trying to say something but they don’t have the proper musical terminology – usually me – really quickly,” he said. Working with Bullion, too, added to the experience and gave Weeks a close new collaborator to help guide his late-night experiments. I was going to a friend’s empty workspace and making loud noises, drinking beer, shouting and playing the trumpet badly.” Also, I wasn’t doing it in my flat where small people and partners are trying to sleep in another room. “I didn’t feel stuck at any point or on the lyrics or any song sections. “It was quick, which often it isn’t,” he reasoned. ‘Hop Up’, he said, was the most fun experience he had had of making an album yet. Since emerging with The Maccabees in 2004, the musician has released seven albums – four with the Brighton band, an original score for his book The Gritterman, and now, two solo records. At this point in his career – and in light of the impact of the pandemic on the music industry – he’s also begun to see his job as less of an indulgence and more of a “treat”. “You have less time, you’re more tired so how do you work smarter rather than longer,” he explained. Parenthood has altered the way Weeks works, largely out of necessity now that other responsibilities – which he characterised as both “very serious” and “ridiculous” at the same time – take up a big chunk of his time. It’s given me an appreciation and love for music that I think I’d always known was great, but I just felt was outside of my jurisdiction.” “And you don’t tarnish the joy by thinking about the joy – you just balloon it up. By allowing himself to now do just that and delve deeper into joyful experiences, he added he had learned that they are just as complicated as darker emotions. In the past, Weeks said he also used the excuse that you shouldn’t question life’s joys as a way to avoid writing happier songs. “It was to achieve a lightness or a buoyancy. “I wanted that kind of cloud nine feeling with every song – that’s the job I gave myself and Nathan ,” he continued. “It just didn’t feel complete.” With no touring able to take place because of COVID-19 lockdowns, the musician started work on filling in the rest of his musical scrapbook, aided in his direction by a new “manifesto”. “I didn’t want to be the only scrapbooking of that experience,” Weeks told NME from his home in London. ‘Hop Up’, on the other hand, revels in the happiness, lightness and all-encompassing love after the baby’s birth. Both records detail Weeks’ experience of becoming a father, with ‘A Quickening’ documenting the anticipation, expectancy and insecurities he felt ahead of the arrival of his son. The album follows 2020’s ‘A Quickening’, and aims to fill in the gaps left by its predecessor. ![]() As the former Maccabees frontman releases his second solo album ‘Hop Up’, Orlando Weeks has spoken to NME about the making of the joyful new record.
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