Our friend Feelds has written us a letter!
Back in September, Feelds, the Melbourne-based project of James Seymour, put out an album filled with clever songwriting and a colorful sense of curiosity. With an overflowing well of emotion at its core, Cut Your Teeth explores humanity through confident and refreshing melodies that linger pleasantly with complex lyrics and guitar riffs that hit at just the right moments. It is both a collection of songs and an immersive experience that result in a resonating glow we can’t resist.
In celebration of the release of Cut Your Teeth, Feelds is throwing an album launch at The Gasometer Hotel on November 14th with stellar support from Obscura Hail and Taylah Carroll. James wrote us a lovely letter on the eve of his album launch (we’re a little behind here in Portland) that provides some deeper insight into the careful consideration behind his debut album. Have a read of the letter, a listen to the album below, and a flip through some photos from his parents’ old karate camp for the fullest portrait of this album of woven intricacies.
“Friends, what a journey it’s been.
Now, on the eve of my debut album launch, I have many emotions: excitement, anxiety, eagerness – the list goes on. It’s crazy to think back on an initial concept when you can hold the finished product in your hands; dumbfounded by the thing that it has inevitably become. Alas, it is important to reflect on these things! It’s not unlike how the earth as an organism needs us to remember where we came from, or how you are reminded of people and places who inspire you through old photographs. Looking back now, I can pinpoint certain things that may have pushed the album in the direction it took, though I would have never known that would be the case while it was happening.
Before I’d written any songs for this record, before I had even stumbled across the theme & vision; I met a man called David ‘Papi’ Hunt. I was studying Audio Engineering in 2015 when we met on a university trip to LA – he was the group’s bus tour guide. I was immediately taken by his infectious enthusiasm for life, but also his passion for change and pushing for what’s right in the world as humans on earth. The recordings you hear at the beginning & end of my album are snippets of a chat we had over our lunch break. I learnt a little about his experience growing up as a Chicakamauga/Melungeon Indian of Eastern Tennessee in Backwoods country, how his life has very much led him to the Hollywood scene, and what he thinks of the world around him. The recording I took just sat away for a few years, and seemed to pop back into my life at just the right time.
I love the idea of imagery and themes. For this reason I felt like I needed to tell a story; a little more than just writing & releasing music. I was kind of blindly looking through old photo albums at my parents house, hoping for some sort of inspiration, when I came across this one album of them on Karate Camp in the 80s (they met doing Karate). The photos are so damn cool – it was something that I just had to share, and it worked perfectly. It allowed me to open up a world that my parents were part of before I existed, and a perspective that I hadn’t really thought about life from before. Mum was pretty reluctant to be so involved initially, but I could tell along the way that it was clearly something she was(is) passionate about, so it was nice to open up that chapter again and allow her to share the story a little more – something I also learnt a lot about.
Meeting people like ‘Papi’ and delving deeper into how people become the way that they are was the thing that really inspired this album. I became fascinated with how simple choices, attitudes & willingness (or willing-less) somehow effect everything, and it all fits together in this big, beautiful mess of existence. Anyway, the songs across this album explore those things – and how my perspective of life and the world around me have essentially shaped who I have grown into.
We never stop growing, and the world doesn’t stop to wait.”
If you live in Australia, get your hands on some album launch tickets here. Swim deep in the raw emotion of Cut Your Teeth below.
