Bill Ryder-Jones’s hometown, in northwest England, stands on the threshold between two worlds, the Anglo-Saxon and the Celtic. “Outside this window, I can see the River Dee. I can see Wales”, the critically acclaimed songwriter says. “I can touch it. Liverpool is on the other side of the peninsula. I can’t see it. It’s further away.”
West Kirby lies at the farthest end of the Wirral Peninsula, across the River Mersey from Liverpool and near the border with Wales. The same in-between quality is a defining characteristic of Ryder-Jones’s psychedelic pop, which blends, to hugely moving effect, dry English wit and Celtic romanticism.
Those connections are spelt out on his wonderful fifth album, Iechyd Da. It wears its Celtic lineage with pride: the title is Welsh for “Good Health”; the project features a recital from Joyce’s Ulysses by the musician Mick Head, Ryder-Jones’s friend and collaborator.
“The place where I live, I’m probably the only member of my friendship group that isn’t Irish or Scottish heritage”, says Ryder-Jones, who embarked on his solo career following his departure, in 2008, from the Mercury-nominated cosmic indie band The Coral. “There’s not many people around here that support the English football team. Everyone’s got a grandfather who wouldn’t allow it.”
Ryder, who is easy-going company, is looking forward to coming to Dublin for a sold-out show at the Workmans Club next week. (He talks enthusiastically about an Irish band he’s producing called Bedrooms.) That upbeat demeanour stands in contrast to a body of work that is astonishingly raw and unflinching. One devastating example is the 2015 track Daniel, about the death of his older brother, who fell from a cliff when he and Ryder-Jones were children. Another is This Can’t Go On, the swooping, string-laden emotional core of Iechyd Da, which takes as its starting point a breakdown he experienced during lockdown.
He doesn’t find it difficult to revisit challenging incidents in his music. Quite the opposite: the recording studio serves as an emotional escape valve. “I live with a lot of intrusive thoughts. So any event going on in my life – like the event that led to This Can’t Go On, I lived within it for weeks and weeks sometimes.”
Though a product of troubling circumstances, Iechyd Da is perhaps the most uplifting album of Ryder-Jones’s career. It is certainly the most critically acclaimed, praised for being “wide-eyed in scope and tender in execution” and for its “extraordinary beauty, unflinching honesty”.
That honesty was hard won. During the darkest days of lockdown, when he was struggling with addiction and the unravelling of a long-term relationship, he clung to the songs. “Looking back, I can see how it was out of desperation as much as anything. I needed something to be more important than the pandemic or a failed relationship.”
The Coral weren’t at any level anti-London until we went there. We were proud northerners
The distance between the inspirational arc of the music and the darkness underneath can be bracing. Consider the aforementioned This Can’t Go On, which hits like Scott Walker doing Wonderwall by Oasis. It’s big and emotive, and you come away feeling 10 feet tall – the paradox of course being that Ryder-Jones wrote it at rock bottom.
“What I’ve received from people is that I’ve hit upon a strange middle point between optimism and desolation. When Domino [his record label] heard it they were, like, ‘We want this to be the first thing we release.’ The line was: ‘We think this is the most beautiful thing you’ve ever done.’”
Ryder-Jones was just 13 when he joined The Coral. They were an overnight sensation: their debut LP went top five and earned a Mercury nomination for album of the year. Yet there was tension from the start: while the group regarded themselves as a psychedelic indie band, their London-based company – seeing only cheeky musicians from the north of England – reckoned they were the new Oasis.
“The Coral weren’t at any level anti-London until we went there. We were proud northerners. In God’s honest truth, the issues The Coral had with the music industry, you could write a book about. It wasn’t just [the label’s] expectations. We were bolstered by the fact we had [frontman] James Skelly, who had a singular vision: ‘We’re a gang and we’re making music like no one else has ever made.’ The rest of us were tripping our balls off.”
He’s deep into rehearsals for his upcoming run of gigs. The road is a strange place for Ryder-Jones, who has struggled with addiction and suffers from agoraphobia (broadly defined as a fear of open spaces). “Touring – there are lot of reasons and ways to get high,” he says. “But I can walk out of this door and go and get leathered. I can ring a dealer who will come to my house. I know people who get way more f**ked up who’ve never toured in their life.”
Ryder-Jones never knows how it’s going to go when he steps on stage. Sometimes it is the ultimate validation, and he’ll walk away buzzing. At other moments he’ll leave feeling hollowed out. “It’s the energy that comes from doing shows. That’s why I’m not made for it. You can go and do one of those shows and feel nothing and be completely underwhelmed. Everyone else is having a great time. You feel terrible. That’s when I’ll go to whiskey.”
It’s a strange thing. In any industry there is a mechanical need for labels
Still, there are upsides to being away from home and from his usual routine. “For someone like me, touring takes away a lot of my daily problems. Getting from one place to another – I’m going to be driven to my hotel. The tour manager is going to tell me what to do. He’s going to give me £15 [the musician’s standard per diem]. All I have to worry about is the show.”
Ryder-Jones is as witty and sociable on the social-media platform X (formerly Twitter) as he is in person. He is willing to take a stand, too: he recently spoke up on behalf of The Last Dinner Party, the Brit Award-winning all-woman band hauled over the coals because of their middle-class backgrounds. As many have pointed out, there are lots of middle-class male groups. Why don’t they catch the same flak?
“It’s a strange thing. In any industry there is a mechanical need for labels,” Ryder-Jones says. But songwriting is mainly about truth, he adds. “If someone is privileged, I have no reason to think that would affect their understanding of the world – or art or love. We’ve had this working-class fetishism for quite some time now. We’ve forgiven a lot of subpar music because it speaks for the people. Obviously, there is something moving about huge amounts of people getting around one thing. It doesn’t always mean it’s good art. Just because a lot of people subscribe to the flat-earth theory doesn’t mean it’s good science.”
Iechyd Da is released by Domino Records. Bill Ryder-Jones plays the Workmans Club, Dublin, on Saturday, March 30th
