Phil Jamieson’s sophomore album 10CHARLIE lands today, although release week hasn’t gone quite to plan.
The Grinspoon frontman was gearing up to take the record on the road for his PJ AIR tour when an on-stage fall left him with a fractured L1 vertebra and forced the entire run to be cancelled.
So, for the foreseeable future, it’s less PJ Air and more, as Jamieson puts it, “PJ in my pjs.”
Thankfully, the album itself has arrived right on schedule. Following 2022’s Somebody Else, 10CHARLIE is a deeply personal collection full of reckless coastal nights, old friends, grief, love, meditation and melodies that seem to turn up wherever Jamieson happens to be – in cars, on ferries, at soundchecks and occasionally at 4am after a fairly sizeable night.
With the launch shows off the table for now, Jamieson has given us the next best thing: the stories behind the record, in his own words.
Here’s 10CHARLIE, track by track.
Weekends
Driving through a coastal town. It was the start of some long weekend.
I was with my daughter, we had the windows down and it had just rained.
You could feel that after-rain heat, you could see people spilling out of establishments, a mood of possibility in the air. I said to Lyla, “This smells reckless, doesn’t it?” You could tell, there was full moon energy.
That energy you feel where it’s like, the night could take you anywhere. I liked the terminology, and the concept of recklessness being tangible to the senses.
She laughed, “Dad, this sounds like the start of a song…” I started building around that, it started life then. “Weekends”, in my mind, is a place or a destination.
You can go to Weekends on a Monday. In my world, it’s like a Twin Peaks bar, a location where you go and it’s a bit surreal. Davey Lane came and collaborated on it with me.
He flew up to Port Mac and we collab’d together, it was great. After that, I started playing it live. On the ‘Nobody Else Tour’, I was doing it live and it was going down well.
You don’t get to road-test songs much anymore, but this was one I was able to do.
Blue As The Sunlight
‘Blue’ is about unconditional love.
Not just for others, but for yourself as well. In some ways, from my perspective, this is about having empathy and forgiveness.
It’s about allowing yourself to be loved and also in doing so, loving others. It’s this feeling that pierces through the melody.
Lyrically, it’s a little obtuse in some ways, but the drama of the song comes from me trying to communicate that on my own personal journey, I’ve unlocked a way to spread love and do it in an unconditional manner.
I’m not always great at it, but I try. That’s the purpose behind the track.
Get It
I was on the ‘Nobody Else Tour’ and we’d just played the Avoca Beach Theatre.
Rob [Muinos], Emilee [South] and I went back to Cathy’s – who is the partner of Ken West, founder of the Big Day Out – place on the Central Coast and had a rager.
That evening at 4am, Rob was next to me with a guitar…we were just playing around and I sang, “They say write what you know…” and Rob says, “It sounds like you’ve worked on that for a bit,” when I hadn’t.
He’s so acerbic, if he thinks it’s good, it’s gotta be good, similar to Lyla. I kept it. The coastal vibes come through in a way that’s contemplative, yet upbeat. On the same tour, we played a venue in Rye and had another rager.
I walked back to my car the next morning and began thinking about the chord progression.
We played the Gershwin Room at The Espy that night and at soundcheck, it all just came to me. I was so excited about this song. Davey did the bv’s.
The call and answer in the chorus – he wrote that. Essentially, it’s a Bruce Springsteen et al, anthemic number. I’m gonna love playing this live.
Ken was a huge part of my life, and it’s nice that the song started life entwined with him in some way.
Reading Keats In Byron Bay
This was a melody that I wrote in my car. I sang it into a voice memo, thinking it sounded like a Taylor Swift melody.
I thought it was interesting. I sent it to Ben Edgar who is a songwriter who worked with me on ‘Blue As The Sunlight’ as well and we worked on how it could turn into something more.
It’s about my friend who passed in Byron Bay, in a carpark. He was a poet as well. I like the idea of reading an English poet, like Keats, in Byron Bay.
There are memories in the second verse about our childhood and how we grew up together. There’s hypotheticals that weren’t meant to be answered.
And now, never will. It’s a light, bubbly song that actually has way more depth to it. It has meaning to it beyond an echo chamber of my own musings.
Nothin’ To Lose
‘Nothin’ To Lose’ is a Davey Lane composition. It actually started life as a Van Halen-esque thing. It was huge. Then when we got to the studio, we didn’t think it was going to work, as much as we loved it.
Oscar came up with the idea of making it a little more English melodic, instead of American hair metal.
We went down that path and evolved it into something almost triumphant. It’s a song of hope and redemption, basically. Maybe a bit of longing too.
Kissed & Found Your Own
This was written on my farm, I tracked it there on my own. It’s a fairly self-explanatory song. It brings with it a sombre mood.
In my personal life, when someone has been like, “It must be for the best,” I’m like…hmm I’m not actually sure about that! Even if it turns out that way eventually, in the moment it’s rarely something I can see. Or need to.
People in any relationship where they’re like, “This was meant to be, this was for the best…”, there is sometimes that moment where it’s actually like, “I don’t know if it will ever be.”
I can acknowledge that it’s easier to say. I’m not meaning for this song to be accusatory, but there’s a nice vulnerability to these verses. For better or worse, I find myself in positions where splinters happen in different circles.
This is me acknowledging that it’s not better OR worse, it just is what it is.
Eager Beaver
This was a song written in probably around 1997.
The first verse is somewhat about indoctrinating and being into dogma; being forced or fed things that are supposedly about freedom and love, but it’s all actually horse shit.
The moment of clarity is about how dogma doesn’t actually serve us that much. It was written very quickly, but it’s a moment of clarity.
It’s about pulling away the shades, the clouds that come with the things we’re force-fed to believe when we are younger.
What Happened to Us?
This was written in New Zealand. I did a show there with Grinspoon, I loved being back in Auckland.
I went on a ferry afterwards to a place to hike, and during that time I thought of this song. It all escaped out of me almost at once.
It’s mournful, yet hopeful. I think there’s a modicum of self-pity in it but that’s not my aim.
It’s just a beautiful question, it’s a bit introspective.
To be honest, I know the answer to the question, but I guess it’s for other people, if they’ve gone through something similar, to think about.
The Soft Return
It’s a collection of moving targets but ‘The Soft Return’ comes from meditation, where after you make an offering, you make a “soft return” to yourself.
You let go of things that no longer serve you. You let go and you create a soft return to come back to yourself.
It’s about humility and ego in many ways, which I think all of us struggle with. I do, especially.
This is my most enlightened piece of work. It’s a seven minute banger, I love this song. It’s one of my favourites. It’s a beautiful way to end it.
10CHARLIE is out now. Listen to the album, and keep an eye on Phil Jamieson’s channels for updates as he recovers and plots his return to the stage.
