MUSIC
ABOUT
Singer/songwriter Charlie Gradon meticulously crafts introspective indie pop that both holds and shakes you at the same time. Citing influences such as Radiohead, Bob Dylan, Daniel Johnston and Mac DeMarco, Charlie’s sprawling, lyrical songs are confessional, complex and have had radio play all over the country. Tracks from his two EPs – Self-Doubt (2018) and Blurry Ones (2020) – have garnered attention on Triple J, Triple R, 4ZZZ and EDGE FM as well as being put on full rotation at FBi, 2SER and Double J.
On top of the no doubt numerous times that people have ham-fistedly hummed his tunes to a friend for an ID, or fastidiously sifted through the FBi ‘Programs’ page to find out what was played at around 4 o’clock the day before, Shazam has facilitated just shy of a thousand identifications of Charlie’s music. They call it Contemporary Folk, and while this is an apt-enough classification, a deeper look through his back-catalogue reveals a swing of sonic exploration whereby the multi-instrumentalist traverses from doom metal to country, occasionally touching down for brief but brilliant forays in garage, indie rock and psychedelic soul.
Originally from the old English county of Essex, Charlie moved to Australia when he was twelve and found music five years later. At seventeen, after listening to Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago, the artform engulfed his life like radical belief. As the story goes, after hearing Vernon’s first official solo offering, he went almost immediately to the music department at Pittwater High to inform his teacher that there were going to be some classes he’d be missing and inquired as to whether there was a guitar that he could borrow. It’s safe to say that he missed more than a few and it’s on this Yamaha primary grade nylon string guitar that he’s gone on to write almost all of his music.
The second batch of these songs, which happened to be the first ones he released, make up the seven song gatefold EP that’s described on his Bandcamp as being ‘earnest, honest and deeply personal’. Self-Doubt, he says, was a lesson in itself. With the laptop being such a part of his process, and the separation anxiety that he was experiencing after engaging an engineer to help him record Blurry Ones, it became glaringly obvious that he needed to write and record a body of work completely by himself. This way, he had no choice but to look at it and say “I did that!”. It’s an intimate, home-made account of Charlie’s grappling with identity, love and humanity at large: one that Double J music editor Dan Condon says possesses “stunning musicality, judicious production and interesting songwriting”. The 22-minute release saw him named as a finalist in Happy Mag’s ‘Needle In The Hay’ competition and its title track was included in TheMusic’s 2018 Writers’ Poll for Song Of The Year.
Blurry Ones is the EP that sat on Dan Frizza’s computer while Charlie kneeled in front of his recording Self-Doubt. Written about a time when he bought his wife a vintage camera that morphed into a metaphor – taking “nothing but blurry photographs” – the now-Northern Rivers based musician sees his 2020 release as a record that doesn’t quite capture who he is or what he’s trying to do. However, it received a far better reception from the tastemakers at the national broadcaster, with rave reviews from Triple J’s Abby Butler, Dave Ruby Howe, Declan Byrne, Gemma Pike and Nkechi Anele, Unearthed executive producer Tommy Faith and Double J’s Zane Rowe. Furthermore, the lead single, ‘Grieving’, made its way to #3 on the AMRAP Metro Radio Charts.
Colours Of My Daydream, due for release sometime in 2023, is the record that Charlie has been trying to make since he started. Co-produced and engineered by Liam Judson, it’s an album with its own atmosphere: one that’s warm, absolute and expressed with the utmost gravity. Written after finally experiencing his Beatles phase, Charlie toes the line between his folk sensibilities and his burgeoning need to cut loose and lose control. Inspired by the likes of Marc Bolan, George Harrison and Aldous Harding, the ten track LP feels deeply vulnerable, inherently knowable, awfully unpredictable and yet immovably rock steady.
CONTACT
nick@savvysounds.com.au