Words: Paul Fitzgerald. Images: John Johnson
Sitting and talking music with Tom Powell is like therapy. You come away enlightened and refreshed by the energy and the passion of the man. When he talks of the music he loves and the music he makes, it’s a truly powerful thing. A little addictive too. Doctors should probably prescribe it.
“I think you’ve just got to be positive to get through these days. I don’t read or watch the news any more, and that’s a conscious decision. I don’t follow politics any more either, that’s not to say I’m ignorant of it, but I must just focus on positivity, my music, family and friends.” Tom Powell tells me.
He stresses the word must. This is more than a defence mechanism, more than just an outlook against a cruel, uncaring world. To him, it’s a life plan. A philosophy we should all share. It’s in him.
And when he talks of his music, he really does mean a lot of music. Eternity, this sparkling debut def.fo release is the first of who knows how many albums this prolific troubadour has up his generously proportioned sleeve. We know there are at least two more albums in the can. With a music video for each track ready to go too. So far, that is.
Like most, def.fo mainman Tom Powell first picked up a guitar in anger as a teenager, growing up with all the necessary and requisite angst of so many young people in cities such as Liverpool. Sitting in his room writing his own brand of bedroom blues, trying to extract songs from within himself to help him express, driven somehow to work it all out that way. There’s been an evolution, of course. A maturing. The reasons to rage don’t go away, though. Same old, same old on that score. But each of us must just find a way through, a way to process it all to prevent it overwhelming us. Tom Powell chooses positivity, but to him its actually much more about asking why people would choose any other way. When music writer Paul du Noyer spoke in his book on Liverpool music Liverpool, A Wondrous Place, about Liverpool musicians being ‘preoccupied with turning rage into beauty’, he could well have been talking about def.fo.
The more observant among us will perhaps recognise Tom Powell from his day job, supplying the melodic bass end to Michael Head and the Red Elastic Band’s brilliantly refreshed and resurgent cosmic pop surrealism. The links don’t end there, either. Eternity was co-produced by one Steve Powell, who just happens to have produced classic albums from, amongst others, The Stairs and Head’s seminal, some say masterpiece “Introducing The Strands’. Oh, and he’s also Tom Powell’s Dad. We’re in the company of quality heavyweights here, and it shows. ‘From tiny acorns’ and all that.
That early start in his musical life, all that absorption of ideas, all those musicians in and out of the house and on the phone, the growing up playing on studio floors, the need to find the music in himself and the forever impulse to get it out. The music. Always the music. All of that has lead def.fo to here, to now, and to a debut album that immediately impresses with it’s musical fluency.
It’s an intoxicating feel, a richly influenced mix of psych fuzz, lyrical idealism and relentlessly warm positive symbolism. Over here, we see elements of trip-hop, over there moody and insistent analogue basslines, in the corner there, hazy folk-rock guitars dance with their arms in the air, while hiding in the darkness smiling knowingly with its eyes closed, a most delicious groove lurks.
As a small taste of the album, recent single and title track Eternity tells it like it is. It breezes in without a worry in the world, all blissful carefree optimism, layered in spaced out harmonies, soaring guitar and a hook you could sing til the cows come home from a long day slow grazing in the warmth of the sun. As with so much of this debut album, its both familiar and instant in making it’s presence felt. There’s an almost tangible sense of lift to the sounds here. As much a buzz for the artists as it is for the listener. And that all-important positivity again. That’s what def.fo does, and he does it knowing that we need it too.
“The thing with creativity, if you allow it to, it knows no bounds. So if you’re someone with a bit of a wild imagination, it can send you mad or you can harness it for something positive.”
This is page one of a story which will no doubt unfold in the coming years. We have much to overcome, but there’s a lot of future ahead. An Eternity, in fact.
