Last week, when Sydney-based artist Tom Christie unveiled his debut album Canopy, we were immediately on board with his vintage garage-pop sounds.
The album is brimming with sunshine-soaked gems, so we caught up with Christie for a run-down of each track. Take it away Tom…
Fresh off the release of his incredible debut album Canopy, we caught up with Tom Christie for a complete track-by-track run-down.
Everyone Wants the Same Thing
Everyone Wants the Same Thing was written really quickly one morning. I had a dentist’s appointment which I ended up running late for because I was frantically trying to get the chords and melody down before I lost it. It was one of the last songs I wrote for the record, and it was a conscious effort to come up with a high-energy opener. It’s a song about letting go of inhibition – it mostly speaks for itself really.
Feelin’ Good
A song celebrating newfound platonic friendship. I wrote it on acoustic guitar in one sitting towards the end of 2017. The instrumental base for this song was the first thing I recorded, towards the end of August 2018. My house has no insulation and it was freezing – I had to take several breaks to turn on the heater and let my fingers warm up before reattempting the piano part. I sang the lead vocal close on mic with no reverb and no double-tracking. I wanted the contrast between the two sections to be striking – the bouncy and upfront verse section giving way to something a bit spacier.
I Have to Make You See
One of the songs I’m proudest of. If I’d done a traditional lead single, this probably would’ve been it. It starts in E flat and gradually moves down to A flat. I really connect with lyrics that deal honestly with themes of failure and seeking forgiveness, so I often end up writing from that point of view. I’ve definitely had moments where I’ve unwittingly hurt people I care about, usually just through selfishness and failure to learn from my mistakes. I didn’t base this lyric off a particular incident, but it probably emerged naturally from a culmination of those feelings. There’s a strummed banjo part in the chorus section – it’s semi-buried in the mix, but you can hear it in the right channel if you listen hard. For a couple of years in high school I was really into the banjo – nowadays I’m content just to bring it out when the song really calls for it.
I Feel No Pain
This is the oldest song on the album, written around April 2017. I originally envisioned it being done much faster, like Peggy Sue or something. I only settled on the slower, more deliberate tango rhythm a while later, and at that point, the song started to work for me. It features the only extensive guitar solo on the album, and it’s also the only track that doesn’t end with a fade-out. The lyric isn’t really directed at anybody – it’s just my own take on the early 60’s pop-rock trademark of combining a somewhat happy-go-lucky melody with a more sardonic or self-pitying lyric.
Lotta People Talking
I detuned my piano to get the slightly deranged honky-tonk sound that you hear on this track as well as a couple of others. It could be considered a companion piece to Feelin’ Good – for both songs, I really wanted to get a strong sense of energy and groove, but to do so in a minimalist/non-forceful way. Neither song uses a full drum kit – Lotta People only has a snare and floor tom, punctuated with a woodblock in heavy delay. The lyric is my attempt at an early Stevie Wonder sort of thing, like Uptight or I Was Made to Love Her. There was originally an organ solo in the middle of the song – it was cool, but ultimately I ditched it because it was hampering the momentum too much.
In the Rain
If habit is the great deadener, then immersing oneself in new places and new experiences is the remedy. Some of my fondest experiences have involved travelling in unfamiliar parts of the world. In the Rain is about that, and the feeling of renewed emotional vigour that comes with it. It was, in fact, raining outside when I wrote this song at my family home in Newcastle. I was resistant at first to the idea of using actual rain sounds on the recording, but ultimately it just worked better that way, especially as a means of tying together the two sections. The actual memory the song was loosely based on was of being in Kyoto with my partner, riding bikes at night in the pouring rain. The lyric mentions raincoats, but in reality, we didn’t have any.
Only For You
This one came to me, almost fully formed, one afternoon about halfway through the recording process. The imagery of lying by my window in the late afternoon and hearing the hustle and bustle outside was directly inspired by The Kinks’ Waterloo Sunset – musically, it owes more to Little Pad and With Me Tonight from The Beach Boys’ Smiley Smile.
I knew this song needed ukulele as the main instrument – I didn’t own one, so I borrowed one from my parents’ place in Newcastle. I’m pretty sure it belongs to one of my brothers – I haven’t returned it yet.
We’ll Be Together
The lyric came first for this song, which isn’t my usual approach – it took a long time to piece the whole thing together, probably a month or two. It’s about the strain of long-distance romance, and how small challenges become much greater when dealing with that emotional/communicative barrier. Bass harmonica features prominently on this one – what you hear is the full extent of my very limited ability to get a pleasant sound out of that instrument.
Just a Matter of Time
Just a Matter of Time is a song which I’d written early on but didn’t decide to use until the last minute. It’s a pretty straightforward 60’s shuffle sort of thing – my favourite part is the instrumental break with competing electric guitar and piano. I recorded the album using a version of Cubase which only allowed me something like 24 tracks – I reached the limit when recording this track, largely because of the number of percussion overdubs. I had to get creative and collapse certain parts into single tracks like engineers did back in the day when working with tape.
Now That She’s Gone
Now That She’s Gone was the last one I finished writing – again, an intentional effort to do something a bit more upbeat. It’s supposed to be a mid-60’s garage rock sort of thing, though it probably isn’t quite heavy enough to qualify. I wanted to sing it like Micky Dolenz – I don’t know if it actually ended up sounding that way, but that approach helped me to get the right feeling when recording the vocal. The distorted electric guitar figure in verse 3 is a little homage to the fuzz guitar in McCartney’s Too Many People.
Thinking of You
Probably the most straightforward love song on the record, although that’s mixed in with lots of imagery about nature and the universe. Right now it’s probably my favourite song off the record. It never quite resolves in a musical sense – it’s in E major, but the chords cycle around without really landing on the tonic, except briefly in the second bridge. I actually wasn’t sure I was going to use this song for a while, largely because I was struggling to come up with lyrics that fit the music. It was the last song I recorded, and it was done quite quickly. I wanted it to sound celestial, and I eventually got what I was looking for by layering piano, Fender Rhodes, Hammond Organ and Vibraphone, all with liberal tape echo.
Dreaming
One rule I try to follow when writing is that a strong melody should sound like it could also work as a lullaby, in the sense that it should have that level of emotional directness and simplicity. Dreaming is a sort of a lullaby in the more literal sense too. It’s the only song on the album to really use a lot of two-part vocal harmony, very much inspired by The Everly Brothers in that respect. It’s a song about solitude and the idea that spending time alone can be a beautiful and restorative experience.
Guess I’m Changing
Around mid-2017 I was feeling a lot of uncertainty about where I was heading. I wrote Guess I’m Changing directly from that headspace – it’s a song about feeling alienated from friendship and what’s familiar. It was the fourth song I wrote for the album, but from very early on I had the sense that it should be the album closer. I recorded a demo on the same night I wrote it, and the final arrangement stays very close to that initial recording – the only major change I made when it came to the album version was the addition of the Mellotron mirroring the acoustic guitar. It might come across as a bit of a downer, but for me, the sentiment is really one of accepting change and allowing oneself the space to come to terms with it.
Listen to Canopy above.
