Nick Mulvey is hands down one of the most accomplished musicians I have ever seen perform. The first time I heard him play, it struck me how rare it is with live music to be blown away by the sound itself — not the energy or the charisma or hook of the choruses — but rather the pure skill of the technical delivery.
It was an early afternoon slot at Wilderness last year and I was among a scattering of people sitting down to soak up the sunshine, half-indifferent to whatever the next low-key folk act would have to offer. But then something unexpected happened. As soon as the trickling, cyclical guitar melodies and Mulvey’s soft, unaffected voice carried themselves over the little crowd, the magnetism of ‘Fever To The Form’ drew everyone closer, making people sit up for a minute and really listen.
Like many of Mulvey’s best tracks, ‘Fever To The Form’ exudes both minimalism and effort- less complexity. “I feel really special about that song,” he tells me. “People seem to take to it. And that one more than any came from a place of working out my inside world.”
It is evident that drawing on personal experience and exploring this ‘inside world’ play central roles in Mulvey’s writing process. “The moment I took the courage to populate my songs with details from my actual life, they got better and it all mattered more. But then I also realised that song-writing isn’t confession — it’s really important to twist your life experience into artifice so that it becomes universal. If you were to do it wrong, that would be terrible. It’s about transcending the personal aspect.”
Listening to what is probably the best song on the album, ‘Cucurucu’, I start to see evidence of this in practice, with lyrics “All of my manhood is cast / down in the flood of remembrance / and I weep like a child for the past” speaking to the kind of mournful nostalgia present in so many of his songs. I ask which he most enjoys performing: “that’s like asking me to choose from my children!” he laughs. But jokes aside, it does seem as though Nick Mulvey’s songs share some of his DNA, they’re so distinctly his own.
Music has obviously been a focal point for a long time. “I never saw my life panning out, but I never questioned that I’d be playing music. I remember my brother saying when he was about fourteen that he didn’t really like playing music, and that was the first time I’d ever heard that. I was like ‘What?! How could you think that?’ I couldn’t conceive of that opinion,” he enthuses. “If someone had asked me as a youngster, whether I’d like a job where you have to learn an instrument, recording techniques, how to communicate to the press, about film and imagery and balance… then I’d have said ‘Yeah I’ll do that!”
It’s difficult to find another artist who shares Mulvey’s musical and lyrical foundation, (not to mention his enthusiasm), a testament to his impressive CV of experience includes studying in Cuba and being a member of jazz ensemble Portico Quartet. “I’ve never been too stylistically specific,” he ponders. “I think I sit between all the different stuff I love.” Rather than straddling different musical worlds, however, his debut record First Mind sounds more like a creative space where different influences and emotions are merged together.
Since that memorable Wilderness performance, things have continued on a steady upward trajectory for Mulvey, whose singles ‘Meet Me There’ and ‘Cucurucu’ have enjoyed generous air-time on Radio 1, whilst First Mind was among the albums nominated for a Mercury prize this year alongside the likes of Royal Blood and Jungle. “I walked past a middling-to-small stage at a festival recently and I just thought how happy I was that it wasn’t me playing there any more, I feel like I’ve done that, you know what I mean?”
Though I’ll never forget seeing Nick Mulvey capture the hearts of a small, unsuspecting festival audience, looking ahead it seems likely there are much bigger things in store.
