Interview: How Gurry Wurry Packaged the Heavy Metaphors of 'Glue' into Accessible Pop - SNACK: Music, film, arts and culture magazine for Scotland

    Interview: How Gurry Wurry Packaged the Heavy Metaphors of ‘Glue’ into Accessible Pop

    A photograph of Gurry Wurry standing outdoors against an overcast sky with out-of-focus trees in the background. He has long dark hair and a full beard, and is looking thoughtfully off to the right, away from the camera. He is resting his forearms on a silver metal railing. He is wearing a retro-style windbreaker jacket with bright pink, purple, and orange colour-blocked panels over a graphic t-shirt.

    Ever-charming crooner Gurry Wurry returns with his usual mix of off-kilter pop and excellent knitwear, and his third album, Glue.

    I’ve just had a couple of listens through Glue, so I guess my first question is: are you alright?

    It’s a slightly heavy album, innit? I think about halfway through, I suddenly realised there were weird metaphors in a lot of songs. There was stuff like cars breaking down, about fixing things, about things being dented.

    I think I do believe in a lot of that subconscious stuff; I guess your brain is trying to figure something out, so it probably is legit. And then you start to see the themes and you’re like, how do I package this up into something that makes sense to someone else that isn’t just me?

     

    And that sort of made sense and fit what I was writing about at the time. It’s funny how they all seem to make sense in the end, even when you don’t necessarily plan it that way.

    I think lyrics are probably the most important part for me. That’s always been the bit that I’m drawn to most in songs.

    It’s probably also the bit I’ve been most confident in for a while. Like, I’m never confident in my singing voice. I’m not a particularly good musician. I’m pretty messy on every instrument I play. But I like sitting and crafting the words. I know I can get these to feel good. These will feel like they say something that hasn’t been said that way before.

    There’s a nostalgic quality to a lot of it as well, I think.

    I guess I’ve always been drawn into older things. Analogue sounds, analogue visuals, things that are made by hand. I think I’ve always been drawn to stuff that’s quite soulful and analogue, in a way.

    I feel like I just make pretty accessible pop songs, I mean, I’m interested in different harmony. I’m interested in jazz and soul and all sorts. I like music that surprises you.

    So I guess I always found it quite strange that when I come off stage, people go, ‘Oh, you’ve really got your own thing going on. It’s really weird.’ I don’t feel like that much of a weirdo, but I’ve come to realise it’s probably because I do make some odd choices and I do like things to take a little left turn.

    But yeah: I didn’t set out to be a weirdo. I’m not as weird as they think I am.

    The cover art for the Gurry Wurry album 'Glue'. Set against a textured, off-white background, a large black silhouette of an animal's head, resembling a cow or a bull, dominates the frame. The animal has distinct horns or ears and stark white, almond-shaped eyes with vertical pupils. Above it, the word "GLUE" is printed in large, bold, textured red capital letters enclosed in quotation marks. The artist's name, "GURRY WURRY", flanks the title in smaller black text.jpg].
     

    Glue is released on Friday 29 May

    Photo credit: Jess & Kieran Logan

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