LUKE SITAL-SINGH

Crack speaks to the folk-fired Londoner following the release of his second EP, Old Flint, which presents an intricately honed mix of ardour and aesthetics.  

Last summer Luke Sital-Singh’s debut single Fail For You and EP of the same name launched to high praise, with the Guardian’s Paul Lester likening the rousing songsmith to a British Bon Iver. Although Sital-Singh enjoys the comparison, admitting dryly it “makes me sound cooler than I am”, he says the similarities end with that song. Instead, the 25-year-old describes himself as “more of a straight-forward pop songwriter”. 

The New Malden native’s second single Bottled up Tight, which hit Radio 1’s In New Music We Trust playlist in March, and the follow-up EP, Old Flint, didn’t live up to the hype for everyone – NME gave the EP a sceptical 3/10. But this modest man is clearly doing something right, and with his textured brand of histrionic guitar music – less melancholy, more moving this time around – he’s winning plenty of fans.

Things have changed a lot in the past year, not least that Sital-Singh can now afford the rent on his new place in Tunbridge Wells – his main goal, he jokes. A sign of the times, our first appointment to interview him is postponed when he is whisked off to New York for 48 hours to play a gig. This whirlwind is something he’s becoming familiar with. As well as touring Europe with Irish folk outfit Villagers, he’s been entertaining at SXSW and even played at Facebook HQ. He’s in the midst of a UK tour now, enjoying the intimate venues he loves most.

We finally meet Sital-Singh mid-soundcheck at the Bush Theatre in London. He’s sitting on a Cath Kidston-esque stool at a scarlet red keyboard. As he gets up to greet us, he seems more reserved than the attention-grabbing scene suggests. His thick-rimmed specs and understated image, a black woollen jumper, jeans and ruffled black hair add to the impression of a quiet, serious soul.

He leads us to a small room backstage, where tables are laid with his wholesome rider and rows of Fosters. “It’s not all for me,” he smiles, “I’m performing with a 20-piece choir tonight for the first time.” He’s nervous at the prospect, especially since they’re yet to practice together and it’s now late afternoon.

Playing solo is an all-consuming experience Sital-Singh treasures. “I really enjoy singing on my own,” he says earnestly, tugging shyly at the sleeves of his jumper. “The history of the folk tradition, just standing up and singing a song you’ve written; sharing a story. There’s something I really love and only get from that. It’s the simplicity of it, and when you get it right, it’s really right. It really feels like something amazing has happened.”

That said, with an array of festival dates in the summer and an album in the pipeline for next year, he’s preparing to work with a band. “It’s a different challenge,” he admits. “But then, come festival season I can compete with crowds who aren’t necessarily into crying!” That should come in handy when he plays Hyde Park in July – the singer-songwriter recently made the surprising announcement he’ll be playing the second date of The Rolling Stones’ vast comeback shows.

Not from a musical background, Sital-Singh is entirely self-taught. He can’t even lay claim to being exposed to an influential music collection growing up. “My parents listened to stuff like Chris de Burgh, Kenny G and Enya,” he laughs. Not letting that put him off, after a brief foray into acting as a teenager, he picked up his brother’s guitar one day. “All my friends were into nu-metal and I started playing in bands. I was just making lots of loud music,” he says. “And then everyone grew up but me.”

Sital-Singh’s sound has changed somewhat since then though. “It was when Damien Rice’s album O was everywhere, I hadn’t heard anything like that before,” he explains. “It was a conversion experience. I was still into Slipknot and Deftones, and I thought, ‘Well this is nice music, and it doesn’t give me a headache’. I just learnt those songs and started doing open mic nights. Through Damien Rice, I started discovering all the older, better people like Bob Dylan and Neil Young.”

Whilst at university in Brighton, where he went to study music, he recalls seeing Ryan Adams perform. “He’s just the dude at honing one thing. That’s how you do it,” he enthuses, “that’s how you captivate an audience for two hours, without any bells and whistles or anything. I walked away from that thinking ‘yeah, this is going to take a long time but it’s worth it. I better up my game’.”

Sital-Singh is in possession of a creative vision, extending beyond his music. The Fail For You video, for instance, which features a silhouette of the artist on Devil’s Dyke against a backdrop of a purple sunrise turning gold, is indicative of the visually powerful effect he seeks. The screen-printed covers of his EPs designed by girlfriend Hannah Cousins, too. He tells us he’d like to do a third EP, in part, because another cover would look good alongside the waves and arrowheads of the previous two.

“The aesthetic of handmade and crafts, I’m really into all that,” he says, unsurprisingly given the list of Links & Loves on his website which includes hipster axe makers Best Made Co. “With capturing organic recording and moments, it links in. It works with the kind of music I do because it’s quite human. I really like things that are just made well, simple things that have been crafted and taken someone years to learn.”

This ideal translates to his recordings. “It’s the same thing I do live. I get up with my guitar or piano and just sing a song. I try and make everything feel really special, and in the moment. I’m not really a fan of squeaky-clean recordings where everything’s perfect. There’s a lot of movement in it, and mistakes.”

Part of this organic quality comes from The Old Flint barn in Sussex, where both EPs were recorded. “With the Old Flint EP it felt like there were lots of moments we were capturing. This little barn has a lot of character, and I don’t know whether it worked, but I was hoping to try and capture some of the atmosphere. I wanted to name it after the place we recorded it, so it’s a nod to a time and a place.”

As with his last EP, Sital-Singh’s climactic melodies and wistful lyrics are often poignant, to the point where people at gigs come and tell him his songs moved them to tears. “My inspiration comes from anything and everything,” he explains. “Sometimes it’s my experience of relationships. I’ve got a song about a whale, songs about my parents, songs about other people. Songs about concepts – I used to be really into philosophy. I was like, ‘how many obscure things can I put into a song that no one will understand?’ I didn’t even understand myself”, he smiles, looking through the window. “But they don’t really work. The songs that work the best have really just poured out of me because I’ve felt something; I’ve been moved myself, rather than …” he puts on a pretentious voice, “trying to conceptualise love.”

Sometimes that personal note leads people close to him to jump to assumptions, he admits. “It’s hard because you have to exaggerate a lot in songs, because life is more boring. Most people don’t have really poetic lives, so you have to look at things from a very specific angle to make them really moving. You have to say ‘you absolute bitch’, you can’t say, ‘you slightly irritated me today.’”

With plans changing daily for the up-and-coming folk singer, he’s not taking anything for granted. Grateful for how far he’s come, if it all ended, he smiles, “I’d probably be working in a coffee shop to be honest.” Even in the act of coffee making, though, he sees craft, “It’s inspiring. I was sat in a coffee shop the other day, before a gig, and I just watched the barista do his thing. It’s the attention to detail.”

“Watching anyone do something, when you can tell they’re really good at it and they care a lot. They want to do something the best they possibly can – it’s just coffee, but it could be anything.”

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The Old Flint EP is available now (http://lukesitalsingh.bandcamp.com/). Catch Luke Sital-Singh at The Great Escape (http://mamacolive.com/thegreatescape/) this coming weekend, and at Secret Garden Party (http://www.secretgardenparty.com) July 25th-28th. 

Words: Hannah Stuart-Leach