Frank Turner - Interview and Album Review

 If Frank Turner’s 2018 album Be More Kind was a whisper, his latest release FTHC is a shout. Both deal with themes of belonging, embracing relationships new and old, and coping with grief, but FTHC confronts these topics with a raw, electrified energy. I sat down with Turner to talk song writing, male mental health, and to explore his latest swerve towards ‘hardcore’ music.

Your new album is called FTHC = Frank Turner Hard Core. What does ‘hardcore’ mean to you as a genre, and why have you decided to turn towards it now?

I’m not necessarily turning towards it – I’ve actually been referring to it for a long time now, and I have ‘UKHC’ tattooed on my arm. If I had to explain the genre, we could be here for a long time! I think it leans towards tracks that are more punk, more aggressive, with influences like the 90s Boston hardcore scene, and bands Converge and Spirit.

Your first single released from the album was ‘The Gathering’, an uproarious track about coming together again for the first time after months of isolation. Can you describe the energy behind this piece?

Well, FTHC isn’t a lockdown album, but it’s an album influenced by lockdown – as I guess everything is now. I’ve been gigging since I was 15, and I didn’t know what it was like for that to go away. As Joni Mitchell said, ‘you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone’. ‘The Gathering’ is a celebration of the return to live music.

I particularly like the ingenious lyrics in the track, for example: ‘we’re butterflies in ballet shoes and brothel-creepers coming out of our chrysalis’. How do you come up with something like that?

Song writing is like fishing. You just sit next to the water and hope. Some days you don’t catch, but this time I did. I really like that lyric too.

I’ve noticed a theme of mental health in many of the tracks on FTHC, most prominently ‘Haven’t Been Doing Too Well’, and ‘Wave Across a Bay’, which you wrote to honour the passing of your friend, the late Scott Hutchison of Frightened Rabbit. Do you see yourself as having an important platform, especially for young men?

I’m always hesitant to use the word ‘important’, as mental health is more of a hidden theme in my work. A few years ago, I was a patron for a mental health charity, and would preach about the importance of talking about your issues, and then go home and not talk to anybody. I’ve started therapy now and I’m pretty open about that. I don’t write songs to try and connect with other people, I just try to right good songs, and if people connect with them – well that’s great. Of course, ‘Wave Across a Bay’ is also about acceptance. I miss my friend, but I’m finding respect and understanding for the decision that he made.

Over the lockdown, you took your music online, and held ‘Independent Venue Love’ concerts to raise money for the struggling arts scene. You actually released many of your new tracks from FTHC as exclusive acoustic performances. How did these online gigs compare to your iconic stadium shows?

Playing acoustic comes naturally to me, and I’ve always believed in the core of just me and my guitar. The livestreams did take a while to get used to, though. I’m used to playing off the audience, and it was weird to finish a livestream and be met with no reaction! But then I got the hang of it. There are still people who can’t attend live gigs now, and they shouldn’t be excluded. I’ve had to refund and reschedule a lot of my upcoming live dates, which sucked. A lot.

FTHC also marks a major milestone in your life, as you’ve moved from London to the Essex coast, which the final track ‘Farewell to my City’ documents. Do you think the change of location might inspire a different style of music?

Probably. I mean, my music always changes according to different periods of my life. I actually moved in October 2020, so I feel quite settled here now. It’s nice to be by the sea.

FTHC – Album Review

After the punky ‘Non Serviam’ and ‘The Gathering’ set the bar for a full-blooded album, Turner leans in closer with his upfront track, ‘Untainted Love’. With a title that seems to address the artificiality of the music industry, (Marilyn Manson’s psychedelic Soft Cell cover comes to mind), Turner tackles his years of substance abuse, declaring that ‘I’m not invincible after all’. A descending guitar backing fades out momentarily to make way for his realisation: ‘the one thing that I never accounted for was love’.

Next up, ‘Fatherless’ teases a few bars of a piano ballad, before a drum-beat announces Turner’s childhood tale of being ‘shipped off to a dormitory, full of kids who made no sense to me’. With shouted verses and a satisfying rocky chorus, Tuner laments the absence of a father-figure. The later track, Miranda, seems to respond to and perhaps resolve this issue. It tells the story of Turner’s parent, a transgender woman who has recently completed her transition. With a kinks-style electric backing, this song feels like a nod to ‘Lola’ with a more open, empowering message. Fittingly, Turner meets Miranda properly for the first time on a ‘sunny afternoon’, and embraces getting to know her for ‘who you really are…and who you’ve always been’.

A couple of tracks later, after the moving tribute to Hutchison, the childhood theme returns again, as Turner narrates his coming-of-age with a witty satirical voice on a parallel with Blur’s ‘Park Life’. Piano notes lurking in the chorus lighten the mood of this track, and the staccato bridge sees Turner ‘searching for something that could bring us back to life’.

There is still room for romance on this album, and ‘The Work’ is a bittersweet document of love in the midst of mundane domestic routines. ‘It’s the work that makes it worth it’, the short chorus rings out, with synth riff that almost verges on pop. Immediately next is another kind of love-song, ‘Little Life’, which describes how everybody’s world shrunk during the pandemic. The acoustic edge of this track follows on from Turner’s former Be More Kind album, and his resolution that ‘I guess that this little life is gonna have to do’, was infused with unexpected joy.

Closing FTHC, ‘Farewell to my City’ returns to the talk-singing that Turner nurtures throughout the album to narrate the cinematic ending of his time in London. The steady, seemingly endless beat reflects the ‘7,300 days’ that he has spent in the city, before rising guitar riffs anticipate the final curtain. This track reveals some of the most creative spoken-word poetry, before Turner sinks into singing: ‘I got tired of London, not tired of life’.

The sound of tuning up a guitar at the end of the very last song suggests that this is not an ending for Turner, but merely a beginning. The singer’s own consolation that he will ‘still see [London] in shows’ reflects our anticipation for his upcoming live tour. FTHC is made to be performed in stadiums, with an overarching message that if you really believe in something – then it’s worth shouting about.