Finding the Constants Within Change: A Conversation with Charlie Cunningham

Charlie Cunningham discusses his sophomore album Permanent Way, the absurdity of huge streaming numbers, his breakthrough track “Minimum,” and an appreciation for how his music has taken him across the globe.

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Charlie Cunningham isn’t your typical streaming success. Although he’s clocked up over 165 million streams just on Spotify, his dedication for extensive touring and a knack for creating a beautifully absorbing narrative within his work truly sets him apart. With their sophomore albums, many artists aim to either directly duplicate their what made their debuts so revered or experiment so wildly that they lose sight of themselves as an artist, in search of an experimental sound that’s disingenuous to their artistry.

With his sophomore album Permanent Way, the follow-up to his critically acclaimed debut album Lines, Cunningham stunning expands his sonic horizons, with the end result being a delicately beautiful and arrestingly absorbing record. What Cunningham manages to do so perfectly in his lyricism is to embody accessible and relatable sentiments, while making his work feeling deeply intimate and authentic.

While his debut album primarily focused on just Cunningham’s haunting vocal and expressive guitar playing, Permanent Way atmospherically embodies more elegantly enthralling production, which elevates Cunningham’s thought-provoking lyricism. While his music is influenced by the Spanish flamenco tradition, Charlie’s spellbinding sound is distinctly his own. Pinpointing a handful of tracks on the album would be a dreadful disservice to the album’s narrative but also an unconquerable task, with each individual song proving to be exquisitely alluring in its own unique way.

After a summer of festivals, Charlie Cunningham heads back on an extensive tour, starting in the US and then mainland Europe before heading around the UK in November. Cunningham has also just announced a show at EartH in Hackney, London for the 6^th of February 2020!

Atwood Magazine spoke with Charlie Cunningham to discuss his sophomore album Permanent Way, the absurdity of huge streaming numbers, his breakthrough track “Minimum” and his appreciation of how his music has taken him across the globe. Dive into our interview and stream Cunningham’s new live video for “Don’t Go Far” exclusively below!

If you explain it too much, you’re really running the risk of affecting someone’s connection to the song.

:: stream/purchase Permanent Way here ::

Stream: “Don’t Go Far” – Charlie Cunningham

A CONVERSATION WITH CHARLIE CUNNINGHAM

Charlie Cunningham: It’s a relief, to be honest. I think that’s the main words for it. I finished it about five months ago and when you put singles, in inverted commas, out and the songs go on Spotify, I always find it really difficult without the context of the record. Now, I know that people can listen to those songs in the context of the record, which is definitely a nice feeling.

Cunningham: To be honest with you, on my part, there wasn’t a great deal of thought; I was cool for any of the songs to come out. If it was down to me, I would have just put them all out in one go. Those were just kind of the ones that kind of seemed to work the best as sort of singles.

Like with “Permanent Way”, the first song that was put out, seemed to serve as quite a good transition from the first record, given the movement of that song being something I did a little bit a couple of times on the first record. That song also had a bit more progression within it, in terms of the other instrumentation, so it just felt like a good kind of stepping stone.

But, yeah, with the other ones there honestly wasn’t as much thought; other people were keen to go with them, so I was like, you know, crack on. (laughs)

Cunningham: To be honest with you, I decided on the track ordering first before I choose the album’s title. I put the order of the songs in a way that seemed to work the best in creating the journey of the record. After that, I thought about the album title a little, weighing up the different options, but I landed on that one because it had just the right amount of ambiguity to it and also kind of talked about the transient nature of time and things being subject to change. Permanent Way just seemed to be the title that I just kept coming back to so that was really how it happened.

Cunningham: With the new one, all the songs started in the same way as the last one, just on the guitar, but then it was seeing what kind of atmosphere and space or feelings these songs conjured up and then going about the instrumentation based on that.

I worked with a great guy called Sam Scott and this record just took longer, there was a lot more thought going into it. Not that there wasn’t thought in the first one but the first one was really just about the song in a simple form. It was a bit more of a process this time but it wasn’t too drastically different but there were definitely more variables.

Cunningham: Just a little bit, I was over there for two weeks. Mainly I made it in Catford in South London with Sam but I went over to LA for two weeks to write with a chap called Rodaidh McDonald who’d worked on some really cool, interesting stuff like Savages, King Krule and Sampha.

I heard that he was interested in doing some stuff so I thought I should probably do that. You know, work with a guy like that and we worked on a few songs like “Bite”, “Don’t Go Far” and “Force Of Habit”. I started those ones over there with him but, as I said, we only had two weeks, so we got quite a bit of it down, but they were finished off back in London with Sam.

Cunningham: Yes (laughs). I do struggle with it a lot. I mean, I have a nice relationship with the streaming side of things and that’s always been very good for me. People are kind of on the fence about streaming services and Spotify and stuff like that but for someone like me who’s a relatively smaller artist or whatever, who’s never been selling millions of records or anything like that, it’s been really beneficial.

For me, it was a way to get the music out there, to have people discover it and then accordingly come to gigs and then when they’re at the gigs maybe buy a record. I think Spotify I’m kind of cool with it but I think the other social media stuff is a constant battle that I do struggle with.

I see the benefit of it in some ways, but it does go against every instinct I’ve in my body (laughs). I’m still not quite comfortable with it but hopefully, I’ll get there at some point.

Cunningham: Yeah, I agree with you. When I was growing up, with all the bands I liked it was purely just about the music and you’d occasionally just see the odd thing in a magazine or something and that would just be so exciting. It’s a bit of a shame, I think you win something, but you also lose something with that stuff.

Cunningham: Exactly. That’s exactly it, to be honest with you. I think you’ve answered it in the question. People often ask, “what’s it about?” or “are these lyrics personal to you?” and I always try to shy away from those sorts of questions for that exact reason. People need to have their connections with the songs, with the song and with the lyrics, and I try to leave it open for them to try and do that. I try not to kind of spoon feed any certain meaning.

Occasionally, there’ll be quite an established narrative on a song but for the most part, I definitely like to leave that ambiguity there so people can interpret things however they want to. I think it’s really important to let people do that because if you explain it too much, you’re really running the risk of affecting someone’s connection to the song.

Cunningham: Yeah, well, every time I release something, I get someone wanting to do a track by track thing and I sit down for a second and just say like “this is so impossible” so I got away with it this time (laughs).

Cunningham: Not at all, “Minimum” was a funny one because I’d had the guitar part of it kicking around for a long, long time; that kind of predates all my EP’s and everything. I knew it was something that was good but I toyed around with lots of different ways to structure that song and I never quite there in time for the EP’s or any of that stuff. So it felt really good when I finally got it together.

I never expected anything that I’d do would ever have anything like 70 million streams, those kinds of numbers are almost impossible for anyone to fathom. But I knew that it had taken a long time to get that song together, it was quite a crafted thing, but you have no idea how things are going to do.

Cunningham: It’s so hard to know because on the streaming stuff it’s just numbers really, it doesn’t feel that tangible really. It’s only when maybe you go and do gigs and you start playing that song and you see that people are moving a little bit more or whatever that you think that this has connected with people.

When “Minimum” got a million streams on Spotify, I was like “Jesus, that’s a lot of listens” and then anything after that has become a bit kind of abstract.

Cunningham: (laughs) Yeah, I know. It’s stupid, I don’t think I got played on the radio once so it’s funny how these things work.

Cunningham: When I’m writing them, I don’t think too much about how it’ll be live, and I haven’t started doing that yet. But I think I do just want people to when they leave a gig to have felt just sort of an augmentation of whatever they were feeling before. I just don’t want anything to be taken away once I’ve done the gig so that’s the main thing, just to make sure I represent the music and songs as well and as honestly as I possibly can. Hopefully, when people leave, they might even like the songs even more, you know? If that makes any sense.

Cunningham: Yeah exactly.

Cunningham: The words for things don’t come out until much later but the melodies and the kind of progression can sometimes happen pretty quickly. I don’t kind of think I need to get my guitar out right now and channel this stuff. My guitar is always an arms reach away so it does tend to be one of the port of calls whatever I’m doing.

I usually trust the initial emotion of the melody and that normally dictates the lyrics a little bit later down the line. Sometimes though, I’ll get a line or something straight away and I’ll just know that that’s a keeper and I’ll work the song around that.

Cunningham: When I was out there, I was like want to get the point where I’d learn these techniques and I understood this music. I didn’t want to come back with this kind of half-arsed skills that I’d not thoroughly learnt. That kind of music is such a cultural thing and you have to be careful when you’re dealing with things like that, that have got such strong connections with people’s culture.

I think it got the point where I kept on moving the goalposts while I out there, where I was just constantly like I want to get this down but I’m not quite there yet. At the start, I didn’t fully realise it takes a long time to master anything really, so I thought it was probably time to get back now.

Plus, you miss your family and friends, but I still could have stayed there a very long time but that was never the plan. So after two and a half years, I thought it was probably time to go and get cracking with the rest of my life.

Cunningham: When I came back, in London for a bit as my best friend was living in Kentish Town so I stayed with him for a few months. Then I went back to Oxford actually and I got some work there in two bars playing guitar. Once I got settled into doing that, working like three times a week, I had enough to pay my rent and keep my head above water. And then it was at that point that I started writing the songs.

Cunningham: I think it’s funny, it’s important for me to breather sometimes and that stuff doesn’t seem to change too much and it’s fairly constant. It can also be very thought-provoking, and I just didn’t want anything to be too distracting.

With my first album Lines, I took that photograph and I just thought this is a really lovely image. It’s spacious and allows you to drift off a little bit; it doesn’t dictate too much to you.

With the Permanent Way cover, that’s actually the Hackney Marshes so that’s actually a little bit of nature in the middle of East London. That was just a photo that Peter Banks, a guy who took a lot of photos for the record, took; it was just one of the many photos he took. It was just such a beautiful, strong image and we just kept coming back to it and kept looking at it so I just thought let’s go with this.

Cunningham: It feels pretty mad. It’s surreal but, then again, I guess a lot of that is down to Spotify and things having that reach. I pinch myself every moment, it’s really abstract until you’re out there and you’re at a place and people are coming in. It’s pretty crazy man.

Cunningham: America is just so big, isn’t it? So the drive between these places is pretty insane, it’s such an unbelievably varied country. Each state might as well be a different country in terms of the people and the terrain. When you’re driving across like Utah or Colorado, it’s pretty unbelievable and otherworldly so I definitely don’t take it for granted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClsgkQz9__Y

Cunningham: The most important thing is the music. That’s an obvious answer, but making sure I don’t leave any stone unturned as to the record or a song and making sure I’ve given it the time and thought that I need is really important. Also, that I’ve accurately represented something and been truthful with it, and if I’ve done that right then everything else that follows is going to be loosely as it’s supposed to be.

I don’t expect anything after I’ve done the stuff, but I expect a lot from myself. Once I’ve finished a record, it’s very much a what will be will be kind of thing, and that’s kind of the way I look at it.

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:: stream/purchase Permanent Way here ::

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:: Charlie Cunningham Tour ::

20 July – Colours Of Ostrava, Ostrava CZ
27 July – Paléo Festival, Nyon CH
2 Aug – Sommerfestival Der Autostadt, Wolfsburg DE
3 Aug – Würzburger Hafensommer, Würzburg DE
4 Aug – Zeltival (Kulturzentrum Tollhaus), Karlsruhe DE
6 Aug – Kulturzelt, Kassel DE
7 Aug – KulturArena, Jena DE
8 Aug – Merck-Sommerperlen (Centralstation), Darmstadt DE
9 Aug – Haldern Pop Festival, Rees-Haldern DE
12 Sep – The Echo, Los Angeles CA
13 Sep – Cafe Du Nord, San Francisco CA
15 Sep – Mississippi Studios, Portland OR
16 Sep – Sunset Tavern, Seattle WA
17 Sep – Fox Cabaret, Vancouver BC
20 Sep – Downtown Arter, Ft. Collins CO
21 Sep – Globe Hall, Denver CO
23 Sep – 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis MN
24 Sep – Schuba’s, Chicago IL
26 Sep – Drake Hotel, Toronto ON
27 Sep – Phi Center, Montreal QC
28 Sep – Cafe 939 at Berklee College, Boston MA
29 Sep – Boot & Saddle, Philadelphia PA
1 Oct – DC9, Washington DC
2 Oct – Rough Trade, Brooklyn NY
5 Oct – Palacio de la Parma, Madrid ES
6 Oct – Tradicionarius, Barcelona ES
8 Oct – Les Docks, Lausanne CH
9 Oct – Mascotte, Zurich CH
11 Oct – Café De La Danse, Paris FR
12 Oct – Het Zonnehuis, Amsterdam NL
13 Oct – AB Club, Brussels BE
15 Oct – Gloria Theatre, Cologne DE
16 Oct – Kulturpalast, Dresden DE
17 Oct – NoD, Prague CZ
18 Oct – Muffathalle, Munich DE
20 Oct – Heimathafen, Berlin DE
21 Oct – Kampnagel, Hamburg DE
22 Oct – Hotel Cecil, Copenhagen DK
24 Oct – Trådgårn, Gothenburg SE
25 Oct – Debaser Bar Brooklyn, Stockholm SE
26 Oct – Parkteatret, Oslo NO
28 Oct – Hertz, Utrech NL
2 Nov – Redgrave Theatre, Bristol UK
3 Nov – City Varieties Music Hall, Leeds UK
4 Nov – Sage Gateshead, Gateshead UK
6 Nov – RNCM Concert Hall, Manchester UK
7 Nov – Holywell Music Room. Oxford UK
8 Nov – The Old Market, Brighton UK
10 Nov – Liverpool Philharmonic, Liverpool UK
11 Nov – Oran Mor, Glasgow UK
12 Nov – Button Factory, Dublin IE
26 Feb 2020 – Hackney EartH, London UK