That’s the thing that really shines through about the Antony sitting before me, he’s a genuinely lovely guy who just writes what he knows, and yeah, he may wrap up hard truths in slightly humorous imagery, but it’s still raw. It’s tangible. The beginning of our conversation is like this, it’s a laid-back flow of apologies, pleasantries and discussions on how much we hate the bank. Whilst I would have preferred to have been physically haunting the halls of the shoot in Ridley Road, timezones and pixelated screens doesn’t seem to hold us back. We’re riffing easily as if we’ve been friends for years. Just two poets lamenting having to control anything logistical, because that’s the crux of this chat, two poets having a conversation about life, the universe and everything.

Working on your own show as a creative is hard because it’s like ‘What hat do I need to wear today?’ I had something similar with a show I was producing, not really the same level as this tour though.  

No, it will be, because it’s your, I mean, your reality is your reality, isn’t it? There’s no point in comparing it against other people’s. We’re in rehearsals this week for the show, for the tour, and it’s the last week we’ve got a rehearsal. Usually, we don’t even have a block of a week, but we’ve got a full week. And I’m there, like, obviously there’s a lot of words and some of the songs I wrote two years ago. So I’ve been learning them. And then dealing with just like an onslaught of really boring logistical emails or like ‘Hey, I’ve just had a meeting with the label and they really want you to up the social posting this week.’ And I’m like, ‘I can’t! I’m currently plugged into a band.’ You’ve just caught me at that time. You’ve caught me at a very strange time.’

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Okay, well, all right. Let’s try and have like a nice, positive vibes chat instead. 

Big time. Big time. It’s nice already, to be fair. 

Good. I’m glad. The whole concept for this article is I wanted it to be much more of a conversation than a bog-standard interview. Because there’s so much of the themes of the album in general, I’ve been listening to it all day today but I actually, genuinely love it so much. 

That’s really kind, that’s good. Obviously, that makes this all better. But yeah, it’s strange. I think, yeah, it feels like this impending thing coming out. And I think the thing that I’m most excited about, but I guess the thing that I’m nervous about as well, is it’s like that whole side B element of it. Obviously, the singles that I’m kind of known for or whatever, that have got me this far are kind of like all of the dark lyrics that are in them all, but they’re all like really hidden away under like layers of me prancing around outside pyramids and stuff. And then side B is kind of super honest and so I’m quite excited for people to see that side of it. The more, you know, almost sort of, the poemy side of it, really. 

I mean, for me, I think I’m probably coming into your music from a slightly different way because I’m a poet myself, the lyrics are what I’m drawn to the most but that’s not really what I think it is. 

No, that’s good. That’s true. But I think, yeah, I sort of designed it like that in a weird way. What if it’s kind of for people like yourself, you are like words first, and that’s what you look for in art. Then there should be that sort of technical or the depth to it. And then I want it to kind of work on the level of if a casual listener heard it on the radio they could still be like ‘Oh this or this makes me feel this.’ I kind of hate the idea of any art being elitist. I take out a lot of the fancy, flowery language nowadays, which is odd. I think when I’m writing page poetry, I leave it all in, but I do end up taking loads of it out of songs because sometimes I feel you don’t need it. I’m just trying to express super complex ideas, I guess, in sometimes humorous, but sometimes just easily digestible ways. And sometimes I’ll just take out words I think are going to put people off.

Being able to express big topics with the most mundane things is a skill in itself. To describe the concept of joy or love or sadness, but you’re only allowed to use words like table, water bottle, chair. How would you make a chair romantic or joyous? And I think that that’s a skill in itself. I also think that sometimes the most beautiful concepts can be re-imagined in those ways. If you want to read poetry that talks about the sky and the moon and the flowers, there is poetry that does that, but talking about things as they are can be very special. And I think that the way that you write does incorporate that. Even the great pyramids of Stockport, for example, like talking about, those as a concept to describe something much bigger.

Yeah. It’s kind of a hook, init. It’s like, I always think of it as a thing to hang all of the more difficult concepts on. And it is like, what you say, it’s a concrete thing, it does exist and people have seen it, so it’s kind of like a nice entry point. But it’s a strange one because obviously, you know it’s super upbeat dancey tune, but then there are really sad lyrics in that song that no one probably… it fully goes over people’s heads like ‘there’s like there’s only so many times I can simulation theory myself out of lunch’ – which is just sounds fucking mental, but it’s like I guess that bit is about not wanting to go out or see friends and stuff because of disassociating and stuff like that. 

Since this happened, like, a year or two ago, where I’ve gone from being a complete unknown to like, a relative unknown. And that’s quite a shock. I’ve had to sort of change, really. You try and keep a lot of the things that make you the same, but then you kind of have to become that guy. You have to become that person on stage that people want to see, you know, that have paid money to see, and you have to become the character. Like the moustache and the hair are a huge part of that. I probably would have changed this, but this is album one, this is the character. So you are kind of hiding behind these different bits. 

I’ve explained half the tunes, there’s sort of sad little bits in all of them, even “Rafters” and that, which feels quite euphoric. I mean, if you just present that chorus differently; ‘I worked out the meaning of everything. I used to get by so easy now I’m crumbling.’ It was like, what if someone just revealed the meaning of life and you actually had the answer and it was like, ‘Oh, we’re all, I don’t know, in a zoo?’ I would to be like, ‘Fuck!’

You know, people kind of don’t want answers. I think people want to live blissfully ignorant of mortality and all that sort of stuff.

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I think that’s kind of part of what makes the whole thing so brilliant though. And I don’t mean to be like, ‘Oh, the album’s really brilliant.’ But I do genuinely think it is.

I am glad, if you like it, then that’s a proper good sign, I think. If it works on a level where a poet and an artist can enjoy it, then that’s it. Because I guess it is like a chip you have on your shoulder. And you also lose confidence and context with the project. I’d be like, ‘Oh, is my stuff as good as theirs?’ Or, you know, ‘They’re headlining this local event and should I be, or whatever?’ And then you start comparing yourself to like, ‘Oh, Barry Can’t Swim, he’s doing Hyde Park.’ And it’s just like, ‘What the fuck am I even talking about?’ You start to lose context of it. And I think, you know, ultimately, it does have that element of, I think that’s probably a thing that I annoyingly like egotistically am striving for now. I’m trying to make a credible record.

The thing that gets me about your album is I think that the main message of it is about hope. That’s all you can really have. And I think that that’s what all art is trying to bring to the fore in a way. 

I think that’s super nice that you got that. Once I had the story, the loose structure of it all, and having a beginning, middle, and end, and like these characters all meeting again. I had that thing where you meet them all at the start, and then they’re all searching for meaning in different ways through falling in love or yoga or dance music or whatever. And then they all come together. And for a while it was going to be a wake, the last tune. So it could have been “Angie’s Wake” [instead of “Angie’s Wedding”] and it was going to be a funeral. And then I was like, it has to resolve in this positive way, and once I had the sonic stuff around the words, you know, optimism bottled is kind of the point of that record and I realised that that’s what it was and that’s what people would get from it. Even though there’s a come down 75% of the way through it.

Yeah, there is. You’re talking about “Restless Leg Syndrome” and “Crashing Up?” It’s got like a bit of a rocky feel at one point. 

Oh yeah, there’s that big outro! We’ve been doing that last night, which is fucking wild. It’s going to be great. You want to do everything right. You’ll know as a creative, I don’t want to be boxed in. I guess the music that I listen to isn’t necessarily the music I make. This is just what came out. I think a lot of people must be like, ‘Oh, he’s trying to sound like this,’ or be like The Streets and all that. I’m not. I was a poet and I like indie music, singer-songwriters, and I like dance music as well.

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I don’t actually think you sound like The Streets at all 

Because you’re a normal person who’s got some form of critical thinking! 

It’s because people hear someone talking poetry over a dance track and they’re like, ‘Oh, it’s like The Streets.’ But the writing style is so different. You don’t write like Mike Skinner, lyrically. 

I fucking love Mike Skinner in his own way, but yeah, it’s not the same thing I kind of do sort of hope that the record puts that to bed a little bit. I think I can kind of see why people would think that. That’s fine, but yeah, I kind of do hope the album puts it to bed. I think it is different.

It is different. And I mean, to be fair, I remember when I first heard “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Fallacy.” And I remember listening to it and being like, ‘Oh fuck, this is so good. And then I had a little moment of my own that I was like, ‘I wanna make this.‘

Yeah, but I think that’s the joy of that tune. I think there is a sort of like accessibility to it, where I think a lot of poets, even around this, started doing the same thing after it, ’cause it does feel so like easily sort of graspable. And that’s a lot of music I like where I’m a bit like, I could do that, in a weird way. You know, like in a nice way. 

In a good way, in a way that makes you inspired and jealous at the same time. I’ve got my own version of that. I have a poem that’s called “Jealousy is my love language.” So I think like there’s an element of that. 

Right! That’s a good title. A good title. 

The other one thing I wanted to ask about “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Fallacy” specifically is whether it always meant to be on this album? Because it’s on your EP Poems To Dance To as well, right? 

Yeah. There’s a choice there. I think sometimes people are forced to re-record singles and put them on their album. I had this really staunch ‘I don’t want any of the old tunes on the record.’ I’m always writing; some of the songs are nearly two years old on the album. And I was like, I want all new tunes. I’ve got these new songs that I think are better and all that sort of stuff. But it was when the story of the record took over, and it would have just been mad not to have it on. That’s the thing that started it all. I did rerecord it, but obviously, it’s like a new version. The mix is miles better and it’s a new vocal, sort of more akin to the live vocal. So I was kind of correcting that, I think, correcting the things that I heard that were wrong with the original one. Service Station at the End of the Universe being the sequel. I just had to have it on. And I do like it. I forget that it’s on the record and it opens side B. I think it knocks a bit harder which is quite nice.

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That’s the track that kind of changed everything as well, right?

That was where I realised, or maybe not quite at that moment, but that was the direction, that’s what I chased after. And I didn’t even realise I’d done it. The point of that tune was that it was the intro to an EP and that’s why it’s all spoken word. There was gonna be like a sung hook and all sorts. And the reason it’s like that is because it was just the intro, it was like the scene-setting thing. You can sort of see it developing. It could have been like an indie project. It could have been way more singing. But then I realised once I stepped back from “Hitchhiker” – I think it was when I heard it on the radio myself, and I was like, oh, that’s kind of different, no one’s really done that. And I did that sort of by accident. So maybe that’s my voice and that’s the thing that I should lean into.

And it’s funny that you always try and make a certain thing, you’ll know with writing you think, ‘Oh I’m gonna write something that’s like Hera Lindsay Bird or whatever,’ and it always comes out as your own thing doesn’t it? It never really is like a Hera Lindsay Bird poem or a Joe Dunthorne thing and I always take solace in that. I’ll chase after ideas and it’ll always come out as my own thing. You’ve got your own way of seeing the world and that. 

But yeah, that was the one that started. It was fucking weird. It was just like a Wednesday. I was at work and I was getting emails from lawyers and management and like Spotify and all sorts. I just didn’t have a fucking clue what was happening.

That’s mad. Did you always plan to do music? Were you trying to make music before, or was it just like a random idea that you were like, you know what, I’m just going to make this a tune?

Honestly, like none of it. Not even in the sense where other creators on the scene that you’ll have met who are super ambitious and stuff, even less than that. I’m not even kidding. I was a teacher, that was my job. That was my life. I was good at it and it was stressful but I enjoyed it and it felt like an important thing to do, to be looking at the year 11s. I grew up, it made me like a real person. I understood community, I understood all sorts of different aspects of life that I didn’t in my 20s because I was a selfish 20-year-old man. And I just sort of grew up and understood that it wasn’t about me. It was like having kids, it was genuinely like having kids. So everything sort of changed through that bit.

I was always writing stuff down. I wanted to do novels, I wanted to do short stories, but not really in a serious sense. I think now it’s all happened, a lot of my mates I have known since I was like five, they’re always like, ‘Yeah, like, of course, you were gonna do something.’ But I was looking in the other direction. So it kind of did feel like a shock. 

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Did you ever write any page poetry as well? 

I write page poetry all the time and I’d love to do something with that, eventually, obviously, there’s a massive difference in there. I’ve got a lyric book coming out at the end of the year, but I’ve managed to sneak in loads of alternate works into there that I haven’t published before, which is quite nice. 

That’s good, that’s like little Easter eggs for people. 

Yeah, I think so. There’s weird alternate versions of the songs or like proto versions. I found loads of notes in my notes app that were like the initial idea, which is quite nice. Like a line I wrote it for in the morning. I’m like, oh, that’s what that’s, that was the, you know, the spark that became that tune, which was quite fun. 

I’ve got a load of those when you kind of falling asleep, and then you wake up and go, ‘Oh, that’s a really good idea.’ And you write it down and then you look at it the next morning and you go, oh god no. 

Yeah, I had a really weird one of those the other day! What did it say? I mean, it made no sense. I was compelled to write it down. Something really abstract that just made no sense. Oh yes, ‘Falling asleep in supermarkets.’ I couldn’t even place where or what that would have meant or I must have thought there was some sort of profound interconnectedness? I don’t have a fucking clue. Can’t even remember. But yeah that was mine the other day. 

So you said that you used to be a teacher. You don’t teach anymore? 

No, I left, so not this Christmas, the Christmas before, so just over a year ago. Just to do music, I guess. Yeah, so I signed a record deal about this time last year. 

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Wow, how did it feel to leave teaching though? It must have been a pretty big deal. Did you have students know who you were? 

So I left mainstream teaching in 2020. I was a high school teacher for five years and I left then, but not to do music. I just left. I kind of had the idea that I wanted to do other things. And then the world ended with COVID. So I had time and that’s kind of where the music started. But I was still working five days a week. I was working in a college for school leavers with special educational needs. I had a lot more control of what I was doing. I was doing art, basically, teaching, painting and doing poems all day, which was great.

At that time, that was when it all started kicking off that year. I was on the radio every day. And I’d done Jools Holland, I’d done Reading and Leeds and Glastonbury and stuff while I was still there. So the parents all knew, the parents were asking for photos and stuff. And the kids were like, ‘What the fuck?’. They didn’t understand, they couldn’t get it around their head. And then they did sort of gradually figure it out. But when it got to the last day, I was so stressed of living the double life of it all. I went in and everyone was like, ‘How are you feeling? You okay?’ And they were like, ‘You do know it’s your last day?’ And I was like, ‘What?’ I had no idea. I just had no concept of what day it was. And I was like, ‘Oh.’ And then they’d all make me cards and stuff. I held it together and then got back in the car and burst into tears. I was just ruined. I was just so not present, it was a lot. And I didn’t kind of have any time to think like, ‘Oh, I’m not going to be a teacher anymore.’ I was so excited that this was all happening, but it all sort of hit me at that moment. It took me a long time to be able to get the car in gear and drive home. 

That’s a lot. 

It still is a lot. I’ve been doing press this week, and then we started to talk through everything, and you remember things. I’m always looking forward, annoyingly, and planning the tour, and always working four weeks ahead. And then you get on to something like this and someone mentions “Hitchhiker” or something, and you kind of go, ‘Oh yeah, that was mad.’ And you just think, ‘Fucking hell, I can’t believe all this has happened.’ I’ve honestly not had a break since it started. That’s just not how it works. So I’ve not really had that big moment of reflection until, you know, sometimes it catches me off guard. Sometimes it’s on stage. I’ve cried on stage loads of times. But you kind of have a moment where you see the song connecting with all these people and you just think, ‘When did this happen?’ Loads of different bits catch me off guard.

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There’s so much power in that though. It’s really beautiful to be able to share so much. When you’re writing it’s such an insular place to be because you’re trying to figure out how or what the song or the poem is about and what you want to tell the world with it. Because I think maybe there’s a connection there between teaching and writing in that way, it’s like you’re trying to impart something on people, no matter what you’re doing. 

They’re so similar. They’re honestly so similar. Especially the live stuff. I had a big conflict when I first started doing the music, where I was a bit like, ‘This is a really selfish thing to do, all of a sudden, this is for me and it’s not for anybody else.’ And I guess for a bit it is, but then once you start connecting and you’ve got people listening to the songs on the way to work and the messages in those tunes. You know, all sorts of mad shit happened. I bumped into Zoe Ball in a coffee shop in London, and she was so pleased to see me. She was on the radio with Chris Hemsworth the day before. I was like, ‘This is a weird reaction to have to meet me, you know?’ And then once I got chatting to Zoe, her and her partner, “The Words to Auld Langs Syne” was their song. It’s a really important song to them. And she was just listening to it and sort of turned around and bumped into me. So you don’t know who’s listening and you don’t know what it means to people. There’s always those little moments.

What’s your favourite track on the album, first of all? And also, any lines that you’re like, ‘That was a good line from me, actually.‘

I think my favourite for a long time was “Angie’s Wedding,” because it felt like a proper song to me. That one, it felt like I’d done and made a credible record, I think. I think I wasn’t hiding so much behind the punch lines and things. And it felt sincere and reminded me of home and lots of different bits. And it was named after a woman I worked with at college, actually. She’s called Angie Ryan, an artist, a proper punk artist. So I named it after Angie, which is quite nice. So it was that for a long time. 

I think it probably is the difficult ones. It’s “Restless Leg Syndrome” probably, which is just that poem that’s over an ambient track. You meet all these characters and I was trying to make this really sincere record and then I was like, ‘Well, I haven’t really said anything about myself yet.’ I’ve said it by proxy through these characters and stuff. So then in a weird sort of meta way I inserted myself as a character in for “Restless Leg Syndrome” and “Crashing Up.” I think those are the ones that I feel sort of most proud of because it felt like I’d done something new and it felt like I’d allowed myself to open up and take a lot of the crutches away, the humour and the three finger twixes of it all. 

How are you feeling about performing those songs? Are you feeling excited or is it a little bit more like on edge?

Honestly, I don’t know. I mean, we’re in rehearsals and it’s the only one I’ve not done. And I don’t know how I’m going to do that in front of thousands of people because I know I’m going to get emotional. I don’t want to be doing that every night and people think I’m going to cry and that it’s a part of the fucking show, thinking it’s some sort of mad affectation or so there’s loads of elements of it that I’m wrapped up in that are hard. I’ve got to do that in front of my mum. There’s loads of fucking mad shit you have to deal with there and there’s elements of your personal life that you kind of have to keep away from just to be able to live as a person. I’m going through a breakup at the minute, which is news to probably a lot of people.

I’m sorry about that. 

It’s alright. Album two is gonna fucking bang! It’s just a terrible time for that to be happening. I think a lot is going on. The way your personal life recontextualises loads of the tunes. I had a really nice resolve at the end of that song and now I’m a bit like, ‘Fuck, that’s quite sad.’ So there’s loads of bits that I’m gonna have to reconcile. So yeah, shitting myself actually about doing that one. I think that probably makes it good, right? 

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I mean, that’s the whole point, right? I’ll tell you what though, I think there’s a thing about risk, right? Because I’ve written stuff, especially in my newer book that is about my dad.

We can do dad stuff big time, don’t worry. 

Yeah, my dad actually died last year and he was an alcoholic and we were quite estranged. He was a lovely person, but he was struggling. It was a whole thing.

I’m sorry, that’s fucking so recent. 

Yeah, and it affected me a lot more than I thought it would because we were estranged. But then I think the fact that when he died, I wasn’t necessarily grieving his death. I was grieving his life, that took a really long time to kind of process. I wrote a lot about my dad and then after this year I did this big show and My mum was there, my aunts were there, and I was just like, I’m gonna have to talk about my dad in front of all of these people. And there feels like a really large element of risk to it. And I think especially with my mum, because I didn’t want to upset my mum, but then at the same time, if it feels risky, then it’s worth writing. 

Yeah, 100%. I mean, I don’t know how much you know about that exact situation, but that’s my situation with my dad. He died, I actually couldn’t even tell you, like maybe 12 years ago, something like that, or maybe 10 years ago, but it was the same thing, alcohol, and he drank himself to death, and I never knew him. I don’t know anything to do with his Polish side of my name, but [Szmierek] was his name, and we kept it for some reason. He had two kids before us, and then he had me and my brother, and then he had two kids after us, but he never knew any of them, he never had a relationship with even the last two. So I had a very similar thing. I was like 23, maybe. We went to the funeral and everything, but I’d never met him essentially. I have maybe four memories with him as a kid that suddenly recontextualised traumatic things that happened. I think that the hard thing for me is that I’m such an emotional person and I cry at everything, but I didn’t at his funeral. I didn’t know how to feel. I didn’t know what or where to put everything other than to sort of ignore it. Me and my brother are really lucky as it didn’t really affect us in that it’s not a thing that we mind talking about. I think other people mind me talking about it more. They’re a bit like, ‘Oh, don’t bring this up.’

I think the only thing for me was I always had this thing where I was like, ‘I’m gonna knock to his door one day and be like; ‘What the fuck happened?’ Or, you know, ‘Tell me about it.’ I never did, and I’ll never find any of that out. When we went to the funeral, I kind of expected someone to open some forbidden family chest where they’d be like ‘He left you this heirloom’ and that’s not how life works unfortunately.

I mean, I felt quite numb when my dad died, and I’m the same, I don’t mind talking about it. I think there’s an element of poetry with that where I’m very used to putting my heart on my sleeve. I mean I made a lot of jokes about it.

I do that all the time. I’m so funny, I joke about my dead dad. 

I can joke about my dead dad!

Yeah, I do it all the time!

I think we’ve gotten off track, I’m just oversharing really.

But people do relate, even if that exact thing hasn’t happened, they’ll find something in it, I guess. I think it is important. I think that was a big thing actually on the record or even in my writing in general, especially doing music, which feels separate to the poetry side of it, which is where I’m grounded. For a lot of people, it’s all very ironic and it’s all very a joke. People are wearing literal masks on stage or it’s a character or they’re saying stuff, but it’s in a funny way, and I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to be me. It’s like my name over the door, you know? I didn’t want it to be like The Dare or something. I think that like plays into it, maybe that it’s super honest, because it just feels like it’s coming from me. And there isn’t a massive disconnect between the live. I mean, I do put on a character on stage to an extent, you kind of have to when you’ve got 7,000 people there. And that guy is just me with a slightly lowered octave of my voice, probably by accident. 

Poetry voice. Yeah, poetry voice. I 100% have poetry voice. 

Yeah, we have a bit of that. Do a lot of hands. I do a lot of sort of late-era Arctic Monkeys hands. It’s what I do. 

In terms of it being a character, it’s not necessarily that it’s a character, it’s just a heightened version of you. You probably had a different version of you when you were in front of a classroom for the kids. 

Yeah. Doctor Who, it was Doctor Who. 

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One thing I do wanna kind of touch on is that obviously we’ve talked a lot about the poetry side of it, but what about the music – are you a words first writer?

Yeah, pretty much always. Once it starts becoming a song, it’ll always be killing your darlings a little bit and having to take bits out so they fit. But that’s why there are lots of alternate versions that are like, some more similar to page poems and stuff. But yeah, words first, usually.

Because the music really accompanies the lyrics on this album in such a perfect way, the music heightens what you’re saying in the song and it flows and makes you feel the things that you’re saying. Whereas sometimes when you can tell that it’s a music first words later. The words can be very pretty, but you’re not necessarily getting them.

What I do quite a lot is purposely offset what I’m saying with the opposite feeling with the music. So if the lyrics are too happy, I’ll put a really sad thing behind it. Or if it’s really too sad, I’ll jazz it up and make it a dance track or whatever. But yeah, I think this was probably the only time where I’ve had the sad words and then put sad music over the top. It was all fucking sad. Usually I don’t do that. Usually, I don’t hammer it home quite as much. I try and pull everyone out of it a little bit. Like, “The Words to Auld Langs Syne” is quite a good example of that. When it gets too hopeful, I think it sounds melancholic. Obviously, it’s not on the record, but it’s what we end the live show with. That’s the one where it’s not quite the explosion of joy, it’s quite melancholic and I think they’re my favourite songs. You know, “Dancing on My Own,” by Robyn, “Feel” by Robbie Williams, they’re all a bit sad but uplifting in the same way. 

The album ends with a wedding, but it’s all those songs that you could play at a wedding. It’s sort of cross-generational and they remind old people of being young, remind young people of what it might be like to be old. I don’t know. It’s sort of like time travel-y sort of stuff.

I think that as a concept, it perfectly rounds off the whole concept of your album as well, because it ends with a wedding. So that’s the whole point. There you go. 

That’s fucking great journalism. We’ve wrapped that up. We tied that up. Perfect. Smashed it. It’s been so lovely. I’m sorry for being late.

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