Issue 94 / November 2018

An instant classic, Yawn is the fourth LP by Bill
Ryder-Jones – a lush, disarming album that finds
the Bard of West Kirby in the form of his life.
“If you run from the
world into music, but
then that becomes
your world – where
do you escape to?”
BILL RYDER-JONES suppresses a smile as Robin,
today’s photographer, takes his picture. Sitting on the
sofa in Yawn Studios, his new production base, he
rolls himself a cigarette and throws me the pack. The
West Kirby studio occupies one of several spaces in a building
in a quiet back street; one of his neighbours makes Samurai
swords. There is a large room filled with instruments, cables,
tattered Persian rugs and ashtrays left behind by bands. Yawn
has allowed Bill to diversify his musical labour – musicians come
here to record and he mixes and masters in a smaller room
upstairs. His new album, also titled Yawn, was recorded here. It’s
an album that steals you with a warm embrace, lush with watery
guitars and washes of cello from which Bill’s gravelly melodies
emerge. Across its 10 songs, Yawn demonstrates the mark of an
experienced musician; a certain restraint.
Although he still hand-rolls his cigarettes, Bill has lost many
of his habits since Bido Lito! first interviewed him in 2010,
around the release of If…, his first album since leaving The Coral.
As I remind him, back then he was adamant that he would be
regarded as a musician rather than a songwriter. “There are a
couple of words that used to really drive me mad, like solo artist
and songwriter.” If… was a largely instrumental concept album,
an unequivocal declaration of Bill’s ability as a composer. The
ambiguity of those emotional landscapes might surprise someone
who knows Bill for his confessional, lyrical guitar music. Now, he
doesn’t care so much what people call him. “It’s senseless to me
arguing that I’m not a songwriter, because that’s half of my job.
It did bug me for a long time, but then other problems make you
realise that’s not a fucking life problem.”
Over the last eight years, his priorities have shifted. I
suggest that you can hear this in his music – he has stripped
back production, leaving more of himself bare. I use the perhaps
tactless words “smoke and mirrors” to describe this, but he
doesn’t seem offended. “I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t like talking,
and I certainly didn’t like singing. I wanted to make something
where I don’t have to literally say, ‘Fucking look at me, see how
much pain I’m in’. I just wanted people to listen to it and go,
‘Fucking hell, look how much pain he’s in’.” Music is a wordless
code that shelters naked feeling, but it begs its own unravelling.
The popular preference for lyrical spoon-feeding has been a
frustration for Bill. “I thought people had more imagination
than they do. I thought people would be able to see how much
it meant to me. I forget that people aren’t actually schooled in
listening to music without a lyrical narrative.”
“It was just a young man trying to not seem like he cares
too much, and ‘this isn’t really me’, or whatever, but desperately
wanting people to see us.” Ultimately, Bill wanted what most
of us desperately want: for others to care enough to read
between the lines we use to obscure ourselves. “I felt a little bit
let down that people were so concerned with the concept that
they couldn’t fathom that it was all about me, and these are just
my feelings and my thoughts. People proved themselves to be
completely inept at seeing that, and as a result I didn’t do much
of it since, but that’s no fault of theirs.” His next two records were
far more wordy and direct – “alright then, if you’re not going to
fucking work it out, I’ll tell you.” He recorded the song Daniel for
2016’s West Kirby County Primary, which deals explicitly with
the death of his brother. The song ends with the refrain, “If you
take the pill/You might not feel so ill/Let’s make it easy for ya Bill”
– there’s no abstraction there.
When I mention this line, he is characteristically open
about his mental health, revealing a major change in his life:
“I’ve stopped all that. No, I don’t take any of that anymore.” He
describes realising he no longer recognised the “very sad, very
sensitive” person he was at 18. “It has been, really, 15 years of
trying to numb that sensitivity in different ways, and I’m bored
of that now. I want to feel. But it can be a very daunting thing
to face, particularly after such a long time.” Bill has achieved
what my therapist is always telling me is possible – a greater
tolerance for the disappointments of reality. This maturity has
made him freer as a musician. “I don’t feel the need, anymore, to
scream at people that this is what I’m going through. Generally,
I try to be a bit more elusive. It’s not fucking abstract; the central
message is always quite clear, but I tried to be a bit smarter.”
I ask whether his intent to be elusive means he won’t tell me
what his new songs are about. “Well, I don’t think it’s my job to
tell anyone what the songs are about.” For Bill, his listeners have
their own part to play. “I wanted people to be able to take it into
their world… I see it more now like a dialogue that I want to be
a part of with people who need it. It was always super selfish,
music, for me. I always used it to make myself feel better, and
now it’s different. I feel a bit of a duty to a small number of people
who are very loving to me, and fund my lifestyle by buying my
records.” The loyalty of his supporters has afforded him a certain
level of trust.
Turning 35 seems to have been something of a milestone for
Bill – by his prophecy, it is the midpoint of his life. “For the first
time, I’m feeling my age. I know for a fact with what I put my
body through, 70 is probably top end for me. There’s so much…”
This year has signalled a turning point for what he puts his body
through: “At 35, I’ve become quite bitter and angry, and nasty at
times. I wanted to work out why that was, so I stopped drinking
the start of the year – eight months completely sober.” Now, he
stays sober when he can, “Unless it becomes unbearable, and
then I’ll have a bender... but like with any drug that you lean on,
it’s [about] getting it out of your lifestyle.” He doesn’t beat himself
up when he slips up – by now, he can accept it.
Bill has insights on why his chosen profession and addiction
come in tandem – “Music can be so healthy, and so fucking
unhealthy. That is a high you can’t buy on the corner of the street,
and it’s just not always there. If you get hooked on something that
is not always available to you, it can send you places – especially if
you’re obsessive, like myself.” For Bill, music is both a source and
a cure for obsession. “It seems to be the only thing that kind of
alleviates… something, I don’t know what it is. I’ve never worked it
out. But take, like, someone you’re obsessed with. For some reason,
explaining it and putting it in music – I put it somewhere else. It lives
there for a bit.” Bill’s emotions are all wrapped up in music – he is
not religious, but he believes in his ears. “I was born with very good
ears… they help me understand the world in really profound ways.
That helped me work out which people I thought were good, and
motives, and ethics, and things like that.”
With all this in mind, I ask him whether making music is a
way to escape loneliness. “Yeh, probably a way to stop being
lonely… the thing with music is it’s different when it’s a career.
When I sit at home in my boxer shorts, I’m on my own, just me
and the telly and I know I’ve got a bath – and it’s what to do
with the rest of my fucking time, sitting in my boxer shorts and
pyjamas. And it’s either split between writing because I’ve got
a career, and writing because I need to.” This joy has waned
over the years, he says, as the financial impetus has increased.
“And then you get this added issue, which is – if from the age of
14, you run from the world into music, but then that becomes
your world, where do you escape to?” For a person whose art
is so often about expressing pain, it is a strange predicament to
become contractually obliged to produce it.
“That’s part of the reason why I’ve stopped my medication –
because I’m ready. I’d take some serious heartbreak right now. If
no one’s died, no one’s left us, I haven’t fucked up or anything…
I’ve got nothing to say.” He says his audience will not listen to
him talk about how happy he is. “And I’ve got no desire to write
about that.” This seems to me a grim paradox; your livelihood
depending on bouts of misery. But Bill is wary of bemoaning his
circumstances too much: “I made a conscious decision not to
moan about that paradigm I just mentioned, because I love what I
do. Not only am I not very good at anything else, I have no desire
to do anything else.” Bill is one of those artists for whom creation
is a means of survival. I am reminded of Franz Kafka’s words: “the
only thing worse than writing is not writing”. As burdensome as
the vocation gets, it cannot be done away with.
Bill has found healthier ways to stay inspired than
suspending himself in a state of anguish. “There’s a way out
of it, and that’s to study art, and to study yourself, and never
forget. We try so hard to forget those horrible feelings.” There
is a certain resilience in keeping your gaze on the awful things
without succumbing to them. He seems to walk a delicate line
between optimism and pessimism about the world. Aside from
music, Bill’s secondary obsession is ancient history. “I think I’m
just generally quite dissatisfied with the world, and have been
since I was a child. We’ve just never really matched up, and I
like reading about a different version of it.” He starts to reel off
facts about Göbekli Tepe, one particular site of archaeological
discovery that clearly captures his imagination. He is entranced
by the idea of murky, unknowable civilisations in the distant past
– the possibility of something completely different.
It seems as though Bill has spent considerable time trying
to make sense of the world, by reading and creating. “We as
a species have just been getting it wrong for a very, very long
time. The real tragedy of this fucking comic is that, as huntergatherers,
we lived hand to mouth, and it was very hard, and
to navigate all the shit that we went through we domesticated
things, and as a result made it ten times worse.” I can relate to
this sense of fundamental disappointment; I tell him that what
terrifies me is the universe’s unblinking indifference, a blankness
which defies you to find magic in it. “I think that might be where
we differ, because I see the world as still, like, this magic, aweinspiring
thing, and that will never change.” He is resistant to my
morbid claim that creativity springs from an impulse to evade the
inevitability of death, and your own insignificance. “I don’t know
any artists who started making music through fear of death,
because I think you do it through fear of living.”
Bill is not interested in leaving a legacy; he’s too busy trying
to make it through another day on our beautiful, terrifying planet.
Music remains his preferred vehicle for this precarious navigation.
With his new album, Yawn, he extends another invitation for
his listeners to mingle their world with his. Bill has spoken
about his new desire to be present in his emotions and reality.
Perhaps those who have bought and played his records from the
beginning may think of this as a returned favour; after all, they
have been listening intently to Bill’s reality for years. !
Words: Niloo Sharifi
Photography: Robin Clewley / robinclewley.co.uk
billryderjones.co.uk
Yawn is released on 2nd November via Domino Recordings.
Bill Ryder-Jones plays Grand Central Hall on 13th December,
and appears in-store at Jacaranda Records Phase One on 2nd
November.
FEATURE
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