John Grant is content being the best version of himself as a solo singer-songwriter living in Iceland, a place far from home in many ways.
John Grant Photo: supplied / Shawn Brackbill
Grant's 2010 debut album Queen of Denmark was named best of the year by Mojo.
It was followed by Pale Green Ghosts (2013), John Grant and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra: Live in Concert (2014), Grey Tickles, Black Pressure (2015), and his last album, Love Is Magic (2018).
The pandemic forced the ex-lead singer of alternative rock band the Czars to reschedule a UK, Ireland and Europe tour meant to run from August to December.
However, he has stayed busy during lockdown, working on a new album. His lyrics could be described as both nostalgic and reflective of a healthier inner dialogue and sense of self.
“I’ve been recording through this period and the people who were going to be recording with me, they had just arrived here in Iceland and then this whole thing kicked off,” he tells Kim Hill.
“There were a couple of days of them deciding ‘should we get home before all the borders close, or should we just make this record’. So, they decided to stay, we made this record and I seemed to very much to glorify my childhood, my early childhood, growing up in Michigan. I seemed to constantly be trying to get that back.
“That was really a time before I became cognisant of the class systems in the world, before I realised what was going to be expected of me being a man, being a gay man, that I was going to be separated from God, from society, all this stuff that surrounded that. Those were quiet happy times in my life.
“There is a lot of that on the music in this record.”
Renowned for songs expressing human frailties, laced with sarcasm, self-depreciation and a caustic wit, Grant’s new material offers more of the same, but layered with an evolving sense of himself and the world.
“How you speak to yourself, your inner dialogue, does make a huge difference in how you relate to others,” he says.
“Wanting to beat somebody to the punch because you expect to be treated poorly. It’s not a good place to be if that’s how you’re living your life. It works as a survival mechanism for a while. I have a much healthier attitude to myself and I watch the way I talk to myself more.
“I don’t really allow myself to be as nasty as towards myself on the inside as I used to and I also, because I’ve made a hell of a lot of progress as a human being, and so I have a lot of great relationships and I’ve had some good healthy relationships now and that should produce different types of songs, you know, love songs and there’s no bitterness there, because when you start caring about yourself to attract a better type of relationship to yourself."
Moving to Iceland seems to have been part of Grant’s journey towards a better version of himself and greater sense of peace, allowing him the ability to exercise a type of social distancing that's good for the soul.
“Sometimes I think to myself, ‘what the hell am I doing here?' But I feel comfortable here. I don’t know if this resonates with you at all, because you live in a country that I imagine is sort of similar. I get tired of living in the United States, where I feel you can taste the rage that’s going on there, that is in American society and that’s not something that you have here.
“You’re not going to be shot in the head for cutting a car off with your bicycle at an intersection here.
“I love where I’m from, I love the States, I grew up there where I spent a huge portion of my life, but I think it’s crazy the stuff that goes on there and is considered to be normal.
“I like being in a place that’s not know for violence.”
Without wanting to sanitise Icelandic society or put it up on a social pedestal, he says nonetheless the absence of homophobia is refreshing. Being a gay and growing up in Michigan in the Midwest, then moving to Colorado, hadn’t been without its problems.
“People are pretty much the same everywhere you go, but there is a national character that starts to emerge when you start to get to know people,” he says.
“There’s amazing, wonderful people everywhere you go and there’s a tonne of idiots as well, so it’s pretty much across the board.
“I went to the gay pride parade last year. And I’d never really taken part in that. I’m not really sure myself why that is. It really liked it – it felt like it was all families and it seemed like the whole country comes out to show their support and I was quite impressed by that.
“When it comes to homophobia it feels like there’s a lot less here. And I’ve never really been to a place where if you told people who were straight that you’re gay where there was absolutely no reaction to that other than a slight yawn, like nobody cares.”
Most of all, the steady march of time has allowed Grant to work through problems briinging maturity as a person and a songwriter.
“I’ve just gotten older, gone to therapy, been reading the books and doing all this stuff for 20 or 30 years now, so it had to take hold at some point,” he says.
Grant still expresses an inner tension – a desire to hark back to a bygone age of his youth, where things were simpler, kept in check by an iron-clad acknowledgment that moving forward and growing is the only real path open to him.
“It seems the older I get I really miss the place where I’m from, but I do much better as a human being when I’m out in the world being challenged with a new language and a new culture and it just seemed to be a really good fit for me.
“And I just really don’t know about this 'home' thing. I really kind of feel like ‘you can’t go home’. They say ‘you can’t go home’ and I feel like that’s true.”
More on John Grant
