James Sullivan Light Years

With another lockdown hitting London in November 2020, James Sullivan knew he had to do something to stay sane. “The year was a total car crash but I knew there was a way to save it. I set myself the challenge of writing 10 songs in 10 days and recording them – with no intention of anyone ever hearing it. It was a move away from writing songs for a touring live band – More Kicks. I wanted to make something based entirely on instinct – trying out new styles and not thinking about anything for longer than a few minutes. Write it, record it, move on.” (The fact you’re reading this of course proves things took a slightly different turn, but hey...) Light Years is a whistlestop tour of blitzed-out fuzz (‘Totally Bored’), paranoid drum machine twitches (‘Getaway’), stadium-sized reflections (‘In The End’) and lo-fi 60s pop nuggets (‘It Won’t Do You Harm’). Take lead single ‘Lea Bridge’, a Velvet Underground, Modern LOVERSstyle paranoid stomp which blends saturated guitars and a swirling organ with a spoken word account of a fatigued journey across town, breaking stride only to say: “All I wanna do is laze around and lie beside you.” “That song laid the foundations for the whole project,” James says. “I’m usually so obsessed with chasing melodies but this time I wanted to free myself completely and just speak directly. I’d been keeping a journal after having some CBT during a particularly rough patch last year. That was part of the advice they gave me – to try and track what was going on in my head. The lyrics for that song are lifted almost word for word from that diary.” The record was self-recorded on a half-broken Tascam 8-track. “This record is full of horrendous recording practices. You can hear saturation, tape reels whirling, me pressing stop too early. But none of that stuff sounds out of place. This record is the antithesis of overthinking. Everything is live takes on to tape from start to finish. How could I even overdub any ‘mistakes’? It’s just me in the room and I only have two hands.” Light Years may have been born of frustration, but showcases an endlessly productive musician – a snapshot of an innately melodic writer holding a microphone up to a beating heart and a restless mind. Definitely worth being heard by more people than just the musician himself.