Today marks the release of Luke Sital-Singh‘s new album Dressing Like a Stranger (stream it here). Bob Fish caught up with the London-born songwriter who moved halfway across the globe to Los Angeles and spoke about his new album, cultural challenges, the music industry and expectations, missing gigs and craving a simpler life.
“A testament to a man and his music, which seems to live outside time and place. What he has crafted is something quite exceptional.”
Bob Fish – Review of Dressing Like a Stranger
It may be hard to believe, but Luke Sital-Singh has doubts. When they creep in, being an artist can be the toughest job in the world. It’s impossible to be creative when you don’t feel that way. It’s not like a faucet that you just turn on, and Sital-Singh is having one of those days, which is a problem because there’s a new album to promote, one that’s very good, Dressing Like a Stranger (reviewed by Bob Fish here).
In the weeks before a new album comes out, artists can question everything, especially if it’s after a prolonged layoff in a foreign country. What motivated the move to America?
“It was less about the work and less about my career and more about lifestyle and adventure and trying to shake things up a bit. Because we were just in a bit of an inspiration ditch back home in the last place that we were living, just not really enjoying it. So, we were just like, let’s just shake it up.
“LA was just somewhere that I knew there would be opportunities for me as a musician, so it was kind of a no-brainer. I’m more of a kind of worrier to stay put, to be comfortable. I’m not a big adventurer. And my wife loves to travel and see things, and she’d wanted to live in LA for ages. So, she was kind of convincing me, and then I had to find in my head the practical reasons. ‘This will still work, and I’ll still be able to do stuff and write with people and meet other musicians, and we invest more in the States and touring the States.’ Which obviously hasn’t really happened because of COVID. But yeah, it was kind of like, let’s just try and change up our lifestyle and make the work function around that.
“I feel like I’ve opened some doors, but I thought I’d be going back and forth a lot more. That’s been the biggest struggle. Because most of my fans and most of my work has been established back in the UK, so I was hoping to be able to go back and forth and keep the two plates spinning, but it’s been harder to do that because I’ve just been stuck here.”
The lure of new places and new people is undeniable. Sometimes when opportunities arise, you just have to take them. Yet, you never know what you’re going to get.
“I made this promise to myself that when we moved here that I wouldn’t just hang out with Brits. Because obviously there’s a lot of Brits in LA, and I was like, “No, I’m going to invest in friends that are American and get involved, not just sort of be in England while abroad.” And I’ve ended up just mostly having British friends, and I think that’s a testament to the fact we are a different breed of people.
“It is an easy place to move to as a British person because our cultures are similar, but then there are just lots of ways that we’re very different, down to the way we look at the world. When I meet a British person, we just have that much more in common. Even that we both live in LA, there’s something about the sense of humour and the outlook that I miss about the UK that I have found here because there are people here from the UK. And I’m a winter soul as well. I quite like wrapping up and feeling cosy in the autumn and the winter, yet I think sometimes the heat of LA, all this perpetual sunshine here, I like it. But, sometimes I miss the rain.
“Politically, I feel like it’s all pretty messed up. When we do move back, I think we’ll probably be a bit shocked about how much has changed in the UK because I feel like here, everyone’s talking about politics all the time; it’s just part of normal life to talk about it. That was never really the case in the UK for most of my life. It didn’t really come up. It was more of a background thing; it wasn’t on the tip of everyone’s tongue. I think the UK has gotten a lot more American in terms of politics and polarization and things like that. So yeah, it’ll be interesting to go back and see how that’s changed.
“I try not to have big sweeping opinions about places and types of people because I don’t really think that’s particularly helpful. I’m just trying to look at the person in front of me and go, ‘Who are you and what are you going through?’ rather than go, ‘America sucks’, or whatever. I just think that’s unhelpful and not true.”
From a career standpoint, Sital-Singh has taken a most interesting path, starting on a major label and then almost being shunted aside as the sales figures didn’t necessarily meet the expectations that the label had for him.
“I did the kind of classic story of being fairly buzzy. I was doing well with a few early releases, and, in the UK anyway, we have a very small music industry, so once you’re making some noise, lots of labels are interested in what you’re doing.
“On the basis of all that hype and radio play, I signed a pretty big deal with a big label and then inevitably didn’t live up to their expectations on the performance of the album. They didn’t really want to do another album after that. So, I was kind of off on my own again. I don’t actually remember pursuing another major, necessarily; I probably just couldn’t get in the door with any really, to be honest. But in hindsight, I’m glad. The indie that I signed to then was actually not really even a label. It was just me and my manager deciding to go in together and change our relationship from manager and artist to label and artist, and he became the label, set up a small imprint and distributed the music through a third party.
“So, It kind of went from big major label with 50 people cc’d on every email to me and my manager being the only people in control, which I absolutely loved. It was a real whiplash experience to go from one to the other, but I really loved it because I just did it. I just did whatever I wanted with the music, and then I feel like the rest of it is just guesswork, trying to market it and put music out. I think everyone’s just making it up and trying their best, and major labels are good because they have loads of money, and they’ll just spend loads of money on adverts and all this other stuff that may or may not work, but it’s just a numbers game really.
“With the second and third albums, we were just trying to not spend that much money and trying to be clever with streaming income and actually make some money rather than just be in debt because of expenses all the time. I just signed to this new label for the new album called Nettwerk. They’ve given me a lot of freedom to musically do whatever I want. Artistically, they don’t have a heavy hand with all that, but they are quite a big label, and there’s a fairly significant team working it. They have hundreds of artists. They’re signing people all the time.
“So, it feels like somewhere between being independent and signing to a major. I think at the moment I’m really enjoying it. We’ve just done this one album. Not sure yet if we’re going to do another one or not. I think I’d like to do another one with them, but that’s up for discussion once this album comes out. But that’s sort of where I land now.
“I think if another major label came a calling, with a nice big check I probably wouldn’t sniff at it. But it’s harder to come by, especially when you’re an older artist with less of that new band, excitement. That seems to be what majors are mostly interested in anyway these days, TikTok artists. Well, that’s basically it. Just TikTok artists seem to be who get the attention of the big labels.”
Sital-Singh seems to be finding his way both in terms of the politics of record labels and the subjects that he sings about. He doesn’t need to take on big topics, not because he doesn’t have opinions, but because, at the end of the day, he relates better to different kinds of issues.
“I think the thing that makes me tick and the thing I get moved by to write is the idea that there are particular things about what it means to be a human, life and questions about suffering and doubts, why are we here? But in terms of how that affects every day-to-day living, that’s sort of what I like to write about. To me, those are the big topics. I’m not writing about a lot of political stuff, for example. The biggest topic of all is just what does it mean to be a human being?
“I’ve found that when I actually get more personal in my lyrics, they seem to resonate with more people. At the end of the day, we’re all going through the same kinds of things, just with different clothing. I feel like my most successful songs are the ones where I’ve managed to tap into some sort of very personal yet universal thing. I’m almost too uncomfortable about it because of how personal it is, yet I put it out there and suddenly everyone’s like, ‘Oh yeah, I feel this too.’ Wow, okay. I guess that was a big thing. I thought it was just me, but it’s everyone.”
One of the problems that people tend to confront in one way or another is their sense of heritage. Because of his last name, Sital-Singh is open to certain kinds of prejudice that other people don’t have to face. Questions about who we are and where we are from have become even more divisive in the past few years.
“That is a big question I’ve struggled to figure out, especially in the last few years with a lot of racism coming back to the fore. I’ve always felt just in a kind of no man’s land. Because my father’s side are Indian, but I was born in London, and he was born in London as well, and his parents were born in Jamaica, but their parents were born in India. So, it’s like sort of smorgasbord of stuff going on there. And my mum’s side are from Wales.
“I wasn’t brought up on any Indian culture or anything. I had a very Protestant Christian white upbringing, really, and I feel like it was almost a bit confusing. I didn’t personally relate to being the colour that I was. I remember being at school, having kind of racist jokes thrown at me by friends and stuff, as a sort of stupid boy banter, teasing each other. I didn’t really take it to heart or really feel destroyed by it.
“And then in terms of being a musician, I’ve just never really known how, or when, it was affecting me if there was any kind of prejudice against me. Sometimes I think about it… if I’m feeling bitter about my career or feeling like I should be further along than I am, I might go like, ‘I wonder if it’s because I’ve got this foreign name,’ or, ‘I wonder if I was just white and called Johnny Smith or something that people would give my music more time or something like that.’ And there’s no way of knowing because my music is just completely Western, like pop indie, folk-pop, there’s nothing at all Indian about it.
“But I think to myself sometimes, if I saw an artist with a very Indian sounding name, would I just make assumptions and skip over it or something or just assume, is there a prejudice there that would just make me disengage initially, or saw the name on a poster at a festival and go, ‘Oh, that sounds like it might be some ethnic music, I won’t go to that.’ These are questions that run through my head sometimes, and there’s nothing I can do about it, and I haven’t really felt it acutely with any kind of treatment. And then sometimes I get funding government funding for various albums and cultural funding in the UK, and I wonder like, ‘Oh, I wonder if I’m getting it because I’m brown, and they need to make sure that they are giving it to people from different cultures and stuff.’ So, it sort of goes both ways sometimes in my head.
Asking any artist about the pandemic and how it affected their writing leads to an array of answers. Being away from England, a bit of a stranger in a strange land, Sital-Singh’s experiences with the pandemic may seem a bit surprising. But at the end of the day, everything has changed, and nothing has changed. For some, it changed what they wrote and how they wrote. But not all people were affected in the same way. Did the pandemic change much for him?
“Honestly, I don’t know if it did. I definitely wrote a few kind of pandemic-y-themed songs, but I think because I feel like I’m fairly melodramatic in the way that I end up framing things I’m going through, I felt like the pandemic was just another thing. There were a couple of love songs on the album where it’s like, ‘It’s all going wrong, but at least I’m with you,’ kind of songs, and I feel like I’ve kind of tapped into that story before, pre-pandemic. I think that’s just part of how I formulate love songs in my head. It’s just like, ‘I’m so grateful that I have Hannah, my wife, with me because I couldn’t do anything without her,’ so whether it’s whatever we’re going through, come back to that sentiment a lot.
“I was seeing friends around the world who were single, just stuck in their homes and couldn’t see anyone and do anything, and I was just like, ‘That sounds so lonely and miserable, and I’m so happy that I can share this with Hannah.’ So yeah, I think that was fairly a big effect on those sorts of songs, but it’s funny because other people would joke that when I moved to LA and it’s all perpetually sunny, and maybe my songs would get happier or something, but I think that’s not happened.
“I’m trying to remember all the songs on the album, but there were some real sombre sounds. I think the whole thing sounds a little bit down in my head compared with other albums. I mean, all my albums are degrees of downbeat, but I think that this one has more of a down-sound which is interesting, and I wonder if I’ve purposely done that in order to not sound like The Beach Boys or something because I’ve moved to California.
“But honestly, I don’t really think about it; it just happened. I just made it how I wanted it to sound, and I don’t really think America or LA has massively affected me. I thought it would affect me more than it has, but I think at the end of the day, I’m just me in another place, and that’s sort of what that song and the album title, “Dressing Like a Stranger,” are alluding to. I feel like I just dress different now because it’s hot, and I wear shorts and baseball caps and sunglasses. I look at myself in the mirror and go, ‘Well, you look different now’, but I don’t feel any different; it’s just kind of a change. I’m sure in five years’ time, I’ll move back to the UK, I’ll reflect and see how this has changed me more, but right now, it feels like minimal change.
“One of the things that I have developed over the ten years that I’ve been doing this now are just production skills and product and interest in that side of the writing and recording. I just love producing, I love studios, I love gear, I love effects and microphones. It’s become a real passion.
“Due to the COVID thing, I just had to make it myself, couldn’t do my usual thing, which is just sort of hire a bunch of musicians and go to a studio for a bunch of time and just disappear and make it. I had to kind of just do it mostly myself, and so a lot of that was just tinkering with kind of freedom, no real eye on budget of when you are in a big studio, it’s costing X amount per day, so you can’t spend as much time really finessing things and experimenting, or at least I haven’t been able to do that in the past.
“It was recorded in the corner of my apartment where I’m sitting now, and then also, I did rent this tiny little room in LA and went in there with my friend, Dan Crawl, who’s another British ex-pat songwriter who I’ve hung out with a lot. He’s got a brilliant ear for production as well, and I knew I needed somebody to stop me going insane and just to help me keep it all together and come up with some ideas. He’s great, so we did manage to do a little bit of disappearing, just the two of us. This was really in the midst of the pandemic; we just could escape from it into this little room and for about two weeks and just tinker.
“I had some toys in the studio, and Dan had a few things. I bought this guitar, which is become a bit of a sound now around LA, these rubber bridge guitars, which have this clunky lo-fi sound, which is on most of the songs, and that’s probably one of the weirdest sorts of sounds on there, that kind of goes across the whole thing. But yeah, we just tried to be as interesting as we could within the remit of the songs because that’s the other thing, I don’t like it when production takes over the song or distracts from the song, and I’m still very much a songy person, verse, chorus, verse, bridge, chorus. They’re not experimental songs; they’re pop songs really.
“But we just wanted to clothe them in interesting ways and I’m really, really, really proud of it. You do it for yourself at the end of the day, but some of these minute details of like, ‘Oh, if we just put that guitar through this weird pedal and then put it through an amp and then put it back through a pedal,’ and all these almost silly decisions that are just for our own fun in the studio, end up being like, ‘Oh, that sounds so cool, no one’s going to care, at the end of the day, it’s just for us,’ and then one of the things that made it sound so amazing is I managed to get Tchad Blake to mix it, who’s one of best mixers in the game, he’s been around for a long time.
“He’s done so many things as a producer and a mixer, and turns out that his wife was one of my biggest fans, and we connected online, and I didn’t realize who her husband was, “Oh, my husband mixes stuff,” and she basically just hooked me up massively and I never would’ve been able to get anywhere near that guy, and he just did such a glorious job. I remember because I was feeling conscious that I’d made it myself, and I engineered it all myself and didn’t have anyone tell me the right way to point the microphones, it was all my learnt experience over the years of watching other people show me how to do these things, so I was feeling a bit, ‘How I got it right and need a mixer who’s going to make this sound great,’ and he just came in and just made the whole thing sound so legit and kind of big and punchy and exciting.
“He sent me one mix; the first mix he did was, ‘Dressing Like a Stranger,’ the first song on the album, he sent me that, and I just remember crying; sitting and listening to it and crying at my speakers just because I was so proud of it, just thought it sounded so professional for want of a better word. It doesn’t just sound like a demo, like one of my rubbishy little bedroom demos, it sounds like a full record that I’ve made. I just remember being so happy with it.
One of the problems with being an artist seems to be there are times when working creatively can be a grind. Considering other alternatives can almost become a way of life.
“The music industry just changes so much where it feels like overnight, there’s a set of different expectations, especially around the social media aspect. I mentioned TikTok before, but all this stuff that is expected of you now, apart from the music itself, basically just being a kind of marketer, self-promotion genius, 24/7, just really takes its toll on me, and I know a lot of artists feel the same.
“I share in my songs, and I don’t really have the desire to point my iPhone at me and be like, ‘Oh, look at me, I’m…’ And just be that kind of personality person, I put myself in my songs, and it’s not a comfortable thing for me. It’s kind of become everything, and there’s a lot of pressure to perform in those avenues. It just gets a bit tricky. I struggle to know what to think about it. I’m not really a person that says, ‘Oh, fuck that, I’m not doing any of that,’ because I understand, I’m a realist deep down, I understand that it’s part of the game and it’s part of the job now, and you’ve got to do it, but there’s a big part of me that just does want to just say, ‘No way, I’m not, I’m just writing songs.’
“But I’ve also got to try and make this thing work because I don’t know what else I would do, I feel like I don’t really have any prospects on anything else, but this is what I was made to do. It’s interesting because I haven’t played a gig… Feeling pretty disillusioned today; for example, I’m having a bit of a down day; I’ve had more of those recently. I haven’t played a gig in a long time, and the gigs for me are important; the gigs are really energizing, actually experiencing live music and feeling, connecting with the crowd and getting the songs across that way and just feeling like you’re part of a moment, that feels infinitely more valuable than, ‘Oh, I’ve got X amount of streams today on Spotify,’ like just keep checking the stats on Spotify streams because that’s where the value is.
“That just leaves you feeling pretty shitty. Most gigs never do, gigs have always been sort of magical experiences, and I feel like I lose my way when I haven’t done a gig for a while. I’m quite excited to be starting a pretty long period of doing a lot of gigs, so hopefully, I’ll come away from those feeling a bit more energized for the next thing, for the next album and not wanting to throw it all in because I don’t know what I would do otherwise. Other than producing, I love producing. I’d love to work with other people producing their music and I’ve started doing that a bit more. I’d love more opportunities to work with other artists on their music, I feel like it’s a little bit nicer to just not have to deal with the artistic, releasing side of it, just like, ‘Hire me to do this job, done the job, pay me,’ and then you walk away from it, that simplicity of that kind of job is very attractive to me at the moment, rather than, ‘I have no idea when I’m going to get paid for anything coming,’ as an artist, you’re just asking, ‘Is the royalty check going to be okay this quarter?’ I don’t know, maybe, but actually just doing a job, the dignity, the quiet dignity of getting hired to do something, doing the thing, getting paid, going home, if feels quite attractive to me at the moment.”
Despite thoughts of different career paths, setting up shop in different locales, and just wondering what comes next, plus a new album, Dressing Like a Stranger, out today, Luke Sital-Singh needn’t worry so much. Everything will be back to normal any day now.
Dressing Like a Stranger is Out Now. Stream it here.
Luke Sital-Singh Tour Dates
September 2 – Paris, Le Trianon*
September 3 – Brussels, Cirque Royal – Koninklijk Circus*
September 6 – Milan, Fabrique*
September 7 – Munich, TonHalle München*
September 9 – Zurich, Volkshaus*
September 11- Vienna, Globe Wien*
September 12 – Krakow, Klub Studio*
September 14 – Berlin, Astra Kulturhaus*
September 15 – Hamburg, Fabrik*
September 18 – Copenhagen, VEGA*
September 20 – Gothenburg, Trädgår‘n*
September 21 – Oslo, Sentrum Scene*
September 25 – Bristol, The Fleece^
September 26 – Southampton, 1865^
September 27 – Brighton, Green Door Store^
September 29 – Cambridge, The Portland Arms^
September 30 – Sheffield, The Leadmill^
October 1 – Liverpool, Jimmy’s^
October 3 – Manchester, YES – The Pink Room^
October 4 – Leeds, Brudenell Social Club^
October 5 – Glasgow, King Tuts^
October 6 – Newcastle, Cluny ^
October 8 – Birmingham, Dead Wax^
October 9 – London, Lafayette^
* supporting Passenger
^ headlining with support from Joni
https://www.lukesitalsingh.com/