Blake Watt has been steadily developing a distinctive voice across a series of acclaimed EPs, while getting his stage legs through festival appearances, London headline slots and support dates with Midlake, Lichen Slow and others. As the offspring of Everything But The Girl’s Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt, he also has the right genetics for greatness. And with The Thread (Bella Union), he largely delivers on that promise.
Watt’s remarkably assured debut LP was recorded over nine months by producer Sam Hodder-Williams, with contributions from violinist Pendo Masote, guitarist Tom Allan, bassist George Vaux and rising singer/songwriter Ella Bleakley. Drawing inspiration from the likes of Elliott Smith, Adrianne Lenker, Neil Young and Bob Dylan, its 11 tracks pair classic folk songwriting with a thematic mosaic of roadways, tunnels and open landscapes. Unobtrusively cinematic arrangements are enhanced by strings, mandolin, banjo, lap steel, mellotron and subtle electronic textures.
The 25-year-old Watt takes us through The Thread a song at a time.
—Hobart Rowland
1) “Remedy”
“This is one of the older songs on the album, and the only song I’ve written on the piano. It was basically the first thing that came out when I sat down that day. We originally had it closing the album, but I guess it’s quite an immediate song and works well to start it off. It feels quite different from the rest of the songs on the record, as it’s rather poppy. I see it more as an ambient track, though.”
2) “Waiting On Nina”
“The penultimate track I wrote for the album. It took me absolutely ages to write the lyrics, despite how simple they sound. I must’ve had about five entirely different versions of this song, but I settled on the simplest lyrics in the end. My girlfriend’s cousin had a baby called Nina, and she texted me to tell me—and that’s how I wrote the lyrics for the first verse. The song is sort of about coming out of my shell a bit more and gaining confidence in my abilities, so it seemed nice to use birth as a metaphor for that.”
3) “Sea Change”
“This one is a fun little number, despite the lyrics being quite mournful and introspective. Sam (Hodder-Williams) recorded each drum part separately, as he had a really specific part in mind that was hard to play in the studio. This was one of the most enjoyable songs to record. We threw a lot of different sounds into the verse just before the last chorus, when everything gets kind of deconstructed. It has an ambient, folky vibe we both really like.”
4) “Fault Lines”
“This was the last song I wrote for the album. Sam had the instrumental already and couldn’t find anything to go over the top, and I wrote the words and melody pretty immediately, almost in one sitting. I wanted to match the moody vibe with the lyrics, and I pictured images of craggy coastlines in black and white to help me get into the right headspace. The words are very simple, though. It’s essentially just a pop song. I like the metaphor of fault lines to describe tension in a relationship.”
5) “The Thread”
“I’m really proud of this one. I worked very hard on the lyrics, and I’m happy I managed to get the word ‘formaldehyde’ into a song without it sounding ham-fisted. I wrote this one over a very long time, and I was quite protective about it. We kept having to do new takes of the first verse because it just didn’t feel right in my head. I’m still not entirely happy with how I sang it; I feel I do it better live now. We brought in our friend Pendo (Masote), who played a lovely string part in the latter half of the song.”
6) “Removed”
“I was trying to emulate a Big Thief song when I first started writing this, but it inevitably went in its own direction. There’s not a lot going on—just guitar, drums, bass, a couple lead lines and airy synth. Sam plays a beautiful nylon guitar countermelody in the last chorus, which is still one of my favorite things on the record. I like the lyrics of this song, too. The ‘kingdom of small things’ and the ‘red moon on the rise’ are cool images, I think.”
7) “Collapsing”
“This is probably the song we’re most proud of. It was born out of a jam between Sam and I, with me just playing a picked acoustic part and him playing a Casio synth. It evolved into a much grander piece that initially opened the record, but ‘Remedy’ replaced it. The child-like voices matching my vocal line at the beginning are my voice pitched up an octave or two and multiplied. I did some mad whispering all over the track to give it that haunted forest vibe we wanted to go for.”
8) “DLR”
“Another old song here. We re-recorded it for the album. As such, we’ve heard it far too many times and can’t really decide what we make of it anymore. I think I can write better songs now, but I still like it. It’s not actually about the Docklands Light Railway—it’s just a decent title.”
9) “Silhouette On The Hill”
“This one originally started as an acoustic song. But then we played the opening over a sparse synth, and it just really worked. It’s quite a pensive, ambient piece that ends in a big crescendo. We were going to call it ‘Badlands’ but decided against it for obvious reasons. We originally had this as the second track. Then I wrote a bunch of better songs, and it got kicked down the end of the album. Still like it, though.”
10) “Three Moon Trail”
“This was originally called ‘Frozen Lake’ because that’s what it sounds like to me. Then this title popped into my head, and I thought it was too good not to use. It has one of my favorite lyrics I’ve written: ‘So talk to me now/I can be sincere/But don’t tell me things I don’t want to hear.’ I like how badly I come across in it and how conflicting it is. To me, it’s very human.”
11) “Tunnels”
“At last, the oldest song on the album. I’m glad we got this one on the record. The singalong at the end is a nice way to end. The flat ’70s drum sound we got on this track I also really like. And the banjo is a strange choice, but it kind of works.”
