I just head that Charlie Winston has a new album due out on 28th January 2013 called “Running Still“. This was a real blast from the past, we used to feature tracks from his 2009 album ‘Hobo’. If you enjoyed his last album expect nothing less and a lot more besides. There is a greater dynamic at play on this release which was produced by Tony Berg (Aimee Mann, Michael Penn) and his band are again on top form adding playful upbeat layers of jazz and more. Charlie also offers some of his own vocal gymnastics on Speak to Me, an all-vocal beat-box treat, he can be heard beat-box jamming again on Wild Ones and Hello Alone.
Running Still is released, as was Hobo, through Real World records, label owner and artist Peter Gabriel has already made everyone aware of his favourite track: Lift Me Gently – “An amazing song, and possibly the best Charlie has ever written….”
The core of his work stems from a mass of influences from Nick Cave, Steve Reich and Jacques Brel (and T.S. Eliot, Wim Wenders and Ingmar Bergman, for that matter) all of whom he mentioned when discussing the album.
“It’s near impossible for me to write in one style only,” says Winston. “And today in my generation of songwriting, there’s a bit of a lack for me. People have forgotten the power of song, since the technology swept through, and how it carries. Coming from parents who are songwriters, that’s my No. 1 thing, really.”
The latter reference being to English folk duo Jeff and Julie who played on the hippy-folk scene of the early ’70s, a musical gift they clearly passed on to Charlie as well as brother Tom Baxter, also singer-songwriter who received critical acclaim for his 2004 debut Feather and Stone. Music has been a constant throughout his life…raised by his parents in their small East Anglia hotel, which he describes as “Fawlty Towers, but with a family” – with two bars and a ballroom, hosting a constant stream of musical, theatrical and comedy performers. He says he was the “cheerful” one of the four children, responding to his father’s coercion to entertain.
“He bribed me to learn how to juggle and ride unicycles and all that at eight years old!” he says. “My brothers Tom and Jo had their own band, so I was watching them do their thing. At 10 years old both my sister and I got piano lessons and my musical world started to be developed.”
Keep an ear out for this one as we’re bound to feature it in our playlist on release.
‘Running Still‘ was released in Europe and Canada in November 2011 and will be released in UK and USA in January 2013.