Let’s get the adulation out of the way first. Johnny Flynn – blue-eyed boy of twee folk pop – is very, very, very good-looking. Fortunately, ours is a telephone interview, so I am confident of my ability to sport a coldly professional air.
More fortunately still, this proves to be unnecessary. He turns out to also be very, very, very nice. I thaw, and we chat.
The singer, who will continue to tour the UK throughout May with his band The Sussex Wit, says that music has become a pretty much full-time occupation since he finished his last run with the RSC last July, though confesses that there hasn’t been much time for indulging in rock & roll trappings.
The band have been kept busy with shows and with the recording of their first album, out later this month. On top of this, they are good friends with most of the other key players in that lovely London scene of almost-folk – Noah and the Whale, Slow Club, Jeremy Warmsley, ETC. He used to live with Jeremy Warmsley, actually.
These friendships do not, apparently, herald the appearance of a new, violin-toting ‘Bloomsbury Group’ equivalent – imposed identities, he says crossly, are not helpful – but they do mean that everyone plays on everyone else’s records. Which leaves even less time for smashing up hotel rooms.
I ask Johnny whether any particular ‘creative routine’ lies behind his music. He says it’s more of an organic process – he’ll come to the band with a song and a melody, and they’ll work out each separate part at the same time as they record.
It means that when each song is complete, it has a distinct set of associated feelings and emotions, arising from the day and place and mood of its creation. A lot of these feelings are centred around his kitchen table, he says.
I tell him that I like listening to his music while I hang up the washing, and he laughs, and replies that what he likes about taking his songs on tour is the opportunity to colour those associated sensations in each song by removing it from that particular place of creation and airing it elsewhere. I laugh too, because that’s almost a laundry pun.
When I ask him to explain how he thinks this music that evokes such particular memories for him translates into similar feelings in his listeners, he ums. Then he says that it’s like ‘some common consciousness’.
He makes the songs to please himself, but it stands to reason that some of the things he like will also please other people. I assure him that this is the case, indulging in a little more adulation before we say goodbye.
