Lonely Robot
The spacesuit is now stowed away as Lonely Robot embark on a completely different kind of musical voyage. Having tackled big themes about the human condition in a galactic trilogy, John Mitchell tells Prog why he decided to make Feelings Are Good his mos
After the astronaut trilogy John Mitchell crashes back down to Earth on his latest album, Feelings Are Good.
These last five years have been extremely productive for prog workaholic John Mitchell, who’s using the present pandemic period to relax and reflect. At the helm of his Lonely Robot project, singer and guitarist Mitchell has successfully conquered the musical galaxy with the so-called Astronaut Trilogy. This culminated in a headline slot at the inaugural Space Rocks event in 2018 and in last year’s final instalment, Under Stars, which was accompanied by its own fully animated film.
In between his interplanetary adventures came the 2018 release of Radio Voltaire by
Kino, another of his musical projects, before he completed writing and recording his new album during the winter of 2019. He then started composing new Frost* songs with Jem Godfrey earlier this year.
Since lockdown, Mitchell’s been taking it easy – his most arduous task has been learning how to use a sewing machine to mend his sail covers. It was in July that Feelings Are Good was released via InsideOut, but – and here’s where it gets a little complicated – although it’s released under the Lonely Robot banner, Mitchell quickly stymies any banter about it being the fourth in the trilogy.
“That period covered in the three albums had run its course,” he explains. “It was great fun to do Space Rocks and it’s not as though I’ve gone off space or anything. I had exhausted the themes and the things I wanted to write about.”
That period covered in the three albums had run its course. It was great fun to do Space Rocks and it’s not as though
I’ve gone off space or anything.
Retaining the Lonely Robot ‘brand’ for the new album was very much a record company decision, he stresses, including the timing of its release while the current pandemic lockdown is gradually easing and doubts still remain over scheduled live dates at the end of this year.
On Feelings Are Good, gone are the cosmic flights of fancy and universal musings on the human condition. Instead Lonely Robot’s returned to Earth and has a few home truths to impart. This radical shift is exemplified by the unsettling album cover of Mitchell’s face: his closed eyes taped up and a drawn-on smiley plaster covering his mouth, as chinks of light escape from both. It’s symbolic of people being guarded with their emotions, a theme he widely explores over the 11 diverse songs that are predominantly influenced by 80s bands. Says Mitchell, “One thing that sets this album apart from the others is that it’s more musically schizophrenic and veers wildly between different styles. The other thing I quite like is that it has my personal stamp on it.
“I wanted to make sure there were no boundaries and that I could do any kind of a song I wanted on it. As Thomas Waber [InsideOut’s label boss] would say, ‘This is the transitional album.’ [But] I think it has a great shape to it. An album’s narrative is the most important thing: the peaks and the troughs and the lulls I think I just about got it right with this one.”
Mitchell plays all the instruments apart from drums, turning again to his friend and Frost*/Kino collaborator, Craig Blundell.
“Craig did a great job. He’s very much the Keith Moon of prog as no two bars are ever the same. But on this occasion, I was very methodical and made a conscious effort to ensure two bars were the same.
“We went through each bar and edited the drums as we did it. Perhaps it sounds a little more restrained, but it is more focused, because there’s less technical bluster. We didn’t use any of the virtual instruments from the first three albums and added a different drum sound to reinvent the thing.”
Mitchell draws on his life experiences to paint the album’s broad narrative and sonic brushstrokes, beginning with the techno title track opener.
“I’ve become my own worst parody as I like to start every album with a little vignette before launching into something bigger. Many prog albums start with a low string noise and the atmosphere builds from there, but I wanted to do something quite direct and stripped back. I used to be a huge fan of Imogen Heap who had a song called Hide And Seek, which I really liked. That used techno voices. It’s a little nod to that, which enabled me to do something with a vocoder.”
Into The Lo-Fi was inspired by a trip down memory lane. “I found a lot of cine film [Super 8] in the loft of my childhood home,” he reveals. “My dad used to set the camera when anything of note came along like a kids’ party or when we went to the Isles Of Scilly. It got me thinking that people often associate their childhood with rose-tinted nostalgia – the sonic equivalent of low-fidelity in the 70s.
“It’s also much more of a straight pop song and therefore something I have not really done before in the context of Lonely Robot.”
The spooky Spiders is about a real person who caused mayhem within Mitchell’s family at the end of his father’s life. He reveals:
“In a prog context, she reminded me of the character of Gríma Wormtongue in Lord Of The Rings, in how he used to bend the ear of the king. That is quite a good metaphor for what she was like. She tangled herself up in our lives quite considerably, but I got a song out of it!”
Recording in winter added an extra chill to Crystalline, which, in turn, was influenced by a song from It Bites, one of Mitchell’s former bands. “I liked the sound we got on Clocks on Map Of The Past and wanted to evoke that.
“It’s about love’s young dream gone wrong, featuring lakes and ice – things that are cold and quite foreboding. I am proud of it as it was
I am a belligerent so-and-so and do have a habit of being
conflicted about the way I feel about things.
the second song I recorded when I was still finding my feet with this album.”
Although most of Mitchell’s musical influences are non-prog, this time he turned to Genesis as a reference point to capture the 80s feel for Life Is A Sine Wave. “I always liked Turn It On Again’s intro and it’s one of the few Genesis songs that I know. I only got into them when they went pop and always liked the way the tension built at the start of that song.”
Again, its narrative relates to something profound in Mitchell’s life. “As someone once said, ‘You shouldn’t expect happiness to be a constant. It’s not a permanent state nor should it be.’ For somebody who has had more extremes of ups and downs over the years, I find great comfort in those words; that you should take each happy moment as it comes and for as long as it lasts. Sine Wave is a clumsy metaphor for the peaks and the troughs of that happiness with a wind-in-the-hair guitar solo at the end!”
Men At Work, Tears For Fears and Mister Mister are all key influences in Armour For My Heart’s 80s vibe, which examines another facet of the musician’s psyche.
“Words can do considerable harm,” says Mitchell, “especially if you are as übersensitive as I am. You can build defences, but on public forums it’s very easy to take people down. You are always seeking positive affirmation, and, in the end, you only hang on to the three hateful comments among the 1,800 nice ones. This is all about taking the poisonous arrows as well as you can.”
While Suburbia looks at social class structures, Mitchell is in full ironic mode with the mournful, orchestrated The Silent Life.
“I’m quite allergic to people who talk too much and there’s an expression: the emptiest vessels make the most noise. For this song, I imagined a couple who fall in love but can’t actually talk because both of them are mute. So these two people observe instead of filling the void with meaningless chit-chat,” he says laughing. “Some people find silence uncomfortable, but I’m the complete opposite.”
Unhealthy relationships are examined in Keeping People As Pets. “It’s a bit darker and not a very happy song, but I didn’t say this album was my laughter marathon!
“When we meet someone, we’re on our best behaviour and can’t let the guard slip. People try to dominate, control, and play mind games. There are a lot of tactical manoeuvres going on in relationships, then we all fall into traps when someone makes you feel bad. You want to make them feel bad back and fairly horrific things can be said in the heat of argument.”
That melodic, cinematic, Mitchell dynamic is in full throttle on the album’s penultimate track Army Of One, which offers another strictly personal view of the world.
He admits: “I am a belligerent so-and-so and do have a habit of being conflicted about the way I feel about things. It’s a metaphor for me arguing the point about things and I do feel like an army of one at times, but all written in the third person. How bloody minded I can be in some ways is a blessing and in other ways a curse. I can be on quite a destructive path at times and can be perceived as quite difficult by people. I accept that and I’m aware I am like that. I got quite emotional doing this song.”
Finishing off is the plaintive acoustic Grief Is The Price Of Love, based on a home truth the musician learned as a child. “There’s a theory that parents buy their kids pets to get them acclimatised to the idea of death. But then you think about how much happiness that creature brought you. It’s one of life’s juxtapositions. There is a price tag every time you have a great love for something, but when you are a kid, they don’t teach you that. You have to learn it the hard way.”
To coincide with the album’s release, Mitchell has five Lonely Robot shows planned for December. The plan is to play London, Germany and the Netherlands with his regular live band featuring Blundell, Liam Holmes on keyboards and Steve Vantsis on bass. However, he’s very conscious of both the timing of the gigs and the album itself because of the pandemic and its possible outcomes.
“We have to play it by ear and, of course, whether people can still afford to buy tickets because of the pandemic’s knock-on effect.
It is really difficult to say [whether the shows will still go ahead].
“I do hope the album reaches the requisite amount of people and, of course, we don’t know if people can afford to buy albums currently. I believe it’s a bad time to be releasing albums. I was chatting to Steven Wilson recently and he’s put his back until the start of next year, but obviously he’s a much bigger deal than I am, and it makes more sense financially to do that. We shall see. But as long as people keep buying them, I’ll keep making them: otherwise I’ll take up a career in landscape gardening or something!”
Feelings Are Good is out now via InsideOut. See www.johnmitchellhq.com for more.