Artist Interview: Katy J Pearson

By Resonate | November 20, 2020

Words by Fred Dodgson

Photos by Abbie Humphries

The country is shut again. About a week ago, sporadic fireworks exploded above silent streets on Bonfire night. A sad, insufficient nod towards the warming festivities we are used to. The inevitable grey has arrived and summer’s last remnants have been snatched away. This year, it feels particularly harsh. The chill that begins to blow in as we near Christmas time is biting a little harder, and winter’s sinister approach lurks seedily behind the autumnal door. 

So, where is the hope? If not in the familiar affection of your favourite venue or in the comfort of a pint beside a roaring pub fire, what do we have to spur us through the bleak? Frothy coffee isn’t going to cut it, and this time we know for sure our government has no idea what they’re doing. We need something to wake us up, someone to force a spring into our mornings and restore the glow in our evenings. We need something to which we can dance, something honest… something real. 

Step forward Katy J Pearson, the West Country Stevie Nicks, armed with a stunning debut LP, a voice for the ages and a set of songs so uplifting in their sincerity they could melt even the most bitter of winter frosts. Return, out on November 13 on Heavenly Records may be poised to provide lockdown therapy for all who seek it, but this is an album that will live on long after our cities are full again. I had the pleasure of catching up with Katy on behalf of Resonate to talk about new beginnings, releasing an album during Covid, major label hardships and the South West effect. 

“I think I had one day of feeling sorry for myself,” explains Katy from an afternoon stroll in Bristol’s Castle Park, “I rang my parents and said, ‘After all this time, and I’m releasing it in a pandemic!’ But then I was like, you know what? This is what it is, it’s what’s happened, there’s nothing I can do about it so I’m just going to have to accept it.” It’s this steely positivity that’s immediately obvious in Katy, sturdily maintained even after recently being forced to push her headline tour dates back to June. This should come as no surprise however, considering the beaming sunlight that runs through most of her tracks on Return. She explains, “People are still going to get to listen to it and I’m still going to enjoy the feedback. I’ve gotten over the grieving period of what could’ve been”. This is a refreshing attitude, especially given the seemingly endless setbacks Covid has presented. The platform is there and the songs hold up with or without a tour, so why wait? 

After hearing about the previous tumultuous set of industry tripwires Katy encountered in the making of KJP’s excellent, West Country-meets-Americana debut, the method behind the confident maturity that oozes through the 24 year-old’s songwriting becomes a little clearer. It’s the result of an artist being allowed to use, for the first time, the only tool they ever needed… independence. 

“There are still times I can get quite protective of what I’m doing because I’ve had so much less control (than I do now),” explains Katy, referring to her doomed days on a major with ex hype project Ardyn. “Things did get a bit mental,” she adds, describing the stereotypical major label beginnings of being sent to America and beyond to “write a hit” with strangers, at an age where most artists have yet to formulate anything close to a sound. Her pleasure in finding out the band had been dropped gives a sign as to the effectiveness. “I was genuinely so happy about it,” she reflects, “I’d started writing really leftfield songs just so they’d want to drop me. Considering I’m only going to be 25 next year, I’m still so young and to have gone through that in such a short space of time is quite crazy.” 

Sonically, the contrast between Ardyn and Pearson’s latest body of work is not so far removed, but where the former feels rigid and eerily controlled, the latter is the opposite. Spirited, personal and splendidly loose, these are important differences, and Return has all the glisten to prove it. As she stands on the doorstep of a potentially momentous first release, have her previous experiences left her with a cautiousness towards the industry? Katy explains, “Now that I’m signed to an Indie label it’s very different, I don’t think I’ve seen any of the old characters I worked with surface now, which is nice. I feel like I escaped it to an extent.” I was intrigued to know if the outside perception of ‘good and evil’ existed when comparing an indie label, such as Heavenly, to your typical robotic major fair? “I think it’s important to remember that any label, even if they’re indie and they love music, is hoping that you’re going to be a success and help them get to the next level. It’s a business. The people at Heavenly are fantastic, I’ve got such a good relationship with them, but I think it’s always important to have that in the back of your mind because it would be silly not too”. 

We move on, and begin to brush on how Return’s fascinating group of songs came to be. Remarkably, given its strength, it began with a hangover of doubt. “It took a while, I was quite under confident after being dropped,” she honestly confesses. “I had to shake off those layers of feeling I was shit and that it happened for a reason and not because I wasn’t good enough. In the end, I had to calm myself down and realise that I just had to start writing again, as soon as I did things started to make sense. It made me realise what the album was about,” she explains, “It was about going back to how I used to write, before I was completely screwed up from what happened (with Ardyn). Returning to an authentic way of doing things, writing purely for myself. I love every song on the album”. 

The gleaming production behind Return, courtesy of Ali Chant and his Bristol studio The Playpen, was another key factor in the crafting of the record. “He was such a good mentor, he approached the new project with sensitivity and just fully got what I was trying to achieve. The studio was only a 15-minute walk from my house and there was something really nice about being able to record in Bristol.” Is it safe to say her move to the Somerset capital from London had a positive impact? “It’s a great community, the music scene here is eclectic and there’s some great venues. The Ardyn stuff all had to be in London, so to get to do all of this in Bristol and sleep in my own bed at night. I don’t know, something about that felt very important. I’m also from the West Country, so I love living in the county I come from again”.

Having had a similar middle-of-nowhere West Country upbringing to Katy, I tell her how much I believe Return to conjure up imagery of Somerset in its most picturesque form. A golden sun glowing on rolling hills, a cow or six, and a luminously orange pint of cider in the hands of an onlooking farmer. She agrees, “Definitely! Most of the songs were written in Devon, Stroud and Gloucester, so it really feels like it’s from this area of the world. Especially with Tonight (lead single) because I did the video for that in Salcombe in Devon which was beautiful. It is quite a summery album, which may have something to do with it. It feels weird to be releasing it near winter, but maybe people need it now!”. Katy is well on her way to joining Adge Cutler’s Wurzels in the admittedly short list of rural South West’s music royalty, although, if Return is anything to go by, she can set her heights a little higher than that.  I finish by asking if she has any expectations for Return post-release and what we can expect going forward. “I’m working on the second album though I don’t have anything to do until June, so I thought I might as well deliver it next year. Besides that, I guess I only hope I can keep making music and be very happy that my albums are out.” She won’t be the only one. Return is a memorable debut that flows with a silk-like clarity and arrives with UV rays all of its own. Perhaps being released just a few days after the positive news of an approaching vaccine, it is landing at the perfect time after all. The hope, somewhere soon, of a Return. To normality, to music, to life as we remember it, and after you’ve heard this album, to a Katy J Pearson show.

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