Newton Faulkner has never been one to follow the script. From the dreadlocked days of Hand Built By Robots through to his inventive live shows, he’s always had a restlessness that keeps him moving forward, even as his music keeps its warmth. With a new album on the horizon (out 19th September), that instinct to push at the edges feels sharper than ever.
The record is full of a kind of playful experimentation. “You Make It Look Easy,” with its knotted riff and slippery groove, baffled even Faulkner himself when he tried to pin down the time signature. “In my head it’s in two different time signatures at the same time,” he laughs. “I don’t actually know what it is. I probably should ask someone…but it just felt right.” It’s classic Faulkner: technical trickery cloaked in something disarmingly accessible.
Other tracks, like Don’t Make Me Beg, pull the sound into bigger, more cinematic territory. “That one’s terrifying to play,” he admits. “It’s the most individual notes I’ve ever had to use in anything. I had to take myself back to early guitar school and re-learn how arpeggios worked. Then you add the vocal on top… it’s a lot.” Yet he relishes the challenge. “I love that thing where at first you can’t do it, then suddenly a year later you’re doing it every night without even thinking about it.”
He goes further: “Pushing myself is one of the things I enjoy. Writing things that are really hard to sing, then having to find a way to sing them. I love the challenge, then the absorption of the challenge. That aspect is fascinating.”
Take his latest invention – MIDI Shoes. A pair of boots, wired up and kitted out with camera lens caps, skateboard grip, designed to make beats while he plays guitar. “If I’m playing a Billie Jean-style four to the floor kick with the snare. That’s literally just walking!” Just the kind of experimentation we’ve become accustomed to, I suggest.
“I’ve always been at least half science project from the beginning!” he jokes.
I’ve spoken to Newton before about the process of creating, but what’s interesting this time is how much joy he finds in collaboration. Pianist Reuben James lent a hand on Spirit Meets The Bone while Lissie’s powerhouse vocals lit up Hunting Season. “She’s really special,” Faulkner says, clearly delighted at how naturally the unlikely pairing came together. “At first you think: I don’t know how this is going to work. Then you hear it back and it makes sense.”
It’s not always easy though. Some tracks were, in his words, “long-winded” affairs, tested by schedules and the business of credits and release strategies. But if anything, those experiences have left him feeling liberated about where to go next. “I know what I’d do differently for the next album,” he reflects. “Decide how it’s going to be credited, who’s doing what, before we even start. This time it was all a bit complicated, but I’ve learned a lot.”
It’s all about keeping the music, the creativity, front and centre. Getting stuck into the process is very much Newton’s happy place, and the luxury of time to experiment has been a joy. “I made conscious decisions quite early on that I wanted the focus to be the work and not anything else that’s kind of a by-product of that work,” he explains. “If you’re chasing something that’s a product of the lots of things that you don’t really have control over, then you can make yourself pretty miserable.”
Instead, he’s focusing on the positive, family-focused outcomes. “If I’m putting food on the table for my kids by pissing around with guitars…well, that’s a beautiful thing and I don’t want to lose sight of that.”
Away from the music, Faulkner continues his long association with Teenage Cancer Trust, with the proceeds of What Took You So Long going to the charity. It’s a cause he’s supported for 25 years. He’s candid about how, during tougher times in his personal life, he had to step back. “It was fine when I was in a good place, but when I wasn’t, I couldn’t psychologically deal with it. Now I feel like I can do it again.” With two children – a teenager and a toddler – and a new album, balance is clearly something he thinks about often.
Perhaps that’s why his philosophy comes back, time and again, to the simple joy of playing and creating. “That’s the game,” he says. “It’s called playing guitar, playing piano, playing drums – because you should be open. You’ve got to remain childlike in order for it to flow the way it should.”
This new record is exactly that: alive, exploratory, fizzing with ideas. It moves from synth-soaked textures to banjos and mandolins, from intricate guitar figures to soaring choruses, always with Faulkner’s unmistakable voice and spirit at the centre. It’s not about reinvention for its own sake, but about stretching, challenging, and above all, keeping the magic in the music.
Newton Faulkner is still playing, still searching, and still finding new shapes to bend his songs into. And that’s exactly why he remains one of the most quietly radical figures in British songwriting.
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