Home » A surreal journey into childhood with John Grant – Giovanni Ansaldo

A surreal journey into childhood with John Grant – Giovanni Ansaldo

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June 25, 2021 12:57 pm

We all remember things from our childhood. Often it is small details, smells and sensations that doze off in the unconscious. Like the clouds that Mason looks at, the child star of Boyhood, a splendid 2014 film by Richard Linklater that tells the passage from childhood to adulthood. Or the trips in the old Buick car with his father described by Bruce Springsteen in My hometown. These splinters of memory are the same ones that feed the songs of Boy from Michigan, the new album by the American singer-songwriter John Grant, a journey that starts from his childhood spent between Buchanan, Michigan, and Parker, Colorado, and the places that accompanied it.

Introducing the first song, the one that gives the disc its title, there are some synthesizer notes a bit like a science fiction movie. Then comes Grant’s voice, always deep and expressive, remembering rides to the park, rides, maple trees and that kid, Scotty, saying to Grant, “Be careful, you’re just a Michigan simpleton, never let your guard down.”

“I don’t know if it’s my most autobiographical record, all my records are very personal. But this is in a more structured way. I chose to open the disk with Boy from Michigan because the story starts right there, and I liked that long intro with the synthesizers, a bit ‘to the Blade runner”, Says Grant from the sofa of his home in Reykjavík, Iceland, where he moved a few years ago. The as usual long beard, a blue t-shirt and headphones, he looks younger than his 52 years. “I can’t do without synths, after all my heart resembles a Yamaha CS-80. I’m also a fan of John Carpenter’s soundtracks – my favorite is that of Halloween III – The lord of the night. It was badly reviewed at the time but I loved it right away. That is the only time on my street that I have secretly entered a cinema, because it was forbidden to minors and I was 15 years old. But also They live e Fog they are masterpieces ”, he adds.

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Stories on the album often have a surreal, almost horror aftertaste. There is that of The rusty bull, one of the best pieces, which tells the travels in the car with his parents. “When I was a kid next to Parker, we drove this wonderful road full of ups and downs. At one point there was a dirty side street where there was a giant rusty bull, so big that you drove under it to get inside a junkyard where my father went to look for spare parts. It was a beautiful and scary thing, I associate it with the time when I was discovering my sexuality, when I began to realize that I was gay. I wrote The rusty bull in one day, even though the idea had probably been in my subconscious for a long time. I really like that slow electronic groove, it’s one of my favorite pieces on the record ”.

Throughout his career, John Grant has always had the ability to tell the contradictions of the American dream. Gay, the son of a Methodist family, received a strictly religious upbringing and as a child suffered bullying and homophobia from his schoolmates. They taught him to despise what he was and he only managed to come out after his twenties. In the past she suffered from depression, anxiety attacks, overcame alcoholism and in 2011 she found out she had HIV. After the experience with the band The Czars, he had even decided to give up music. It was Midlake who convinced him to record the splendid Queen of Denmark, the 2010 album that introduced him to the international audience.

“I’m a victim of the American dream, that’s why I talk about it so often in my songs, and especially on this record. The American dream is: fame and money. If you don’t have one of these two things, or both, you are nobody. Songwriter and friend Cate Le Bon, who produced Boy from Michigan with me here in my home in Reykjavík, while we were working on the songs, he convinced me to read Slaughterhouse No. 5 by Kurt Vonnegut, perhaps my favorite American writer. Vonnegut argued that being poor in the United States is something to be ashamed of, it is a personal failure. They often ask me ‘Why do you always think about the United States if you live somewhere else?’. I reply that you can never leave your home “.

“Behind this album there are as usual many influences, from Chris & Cosey to Devo, but also Terrence Malick’s films such as The tree of life, who create epics from seemingly insignificant details, or even Monet’s expressionist painting “, continues the singer-songwriter,” The urge to look at my past in reality also comes from US politics, from the horrific experience of the Trump presidency, which inspired in particular the song The only baby“. But the policy is also in the final Billy, in which the protagonist destroys himself due to the “cult of masculinity”.



It comes naturally to ask Grant why his music is so personal, he speaks unfiltered about all his problems and puts his obsessions center stage. “It comes naturally to me. It is a way to take control of my life, to survive and find meaning in the world around me. They taught me to be ashamed of who I am and for me this is a nice way to stop despising myself. With music I fix things. At first I didn’t want to make songs about being gay or having HIV. I did it because this thing in the past has been used against me as a weapon ”.

What projects does the singer-songwriter have for the next few months, pandemic permitting? “I will be doing UK gigs in September and Europe dates in 2022. If I can’t go on tour, I’ll work on some soundtrack or new songs. Sooner or later I would like to make a record mixing all the languages ​​I know “, adds Grant, who speaks German, Russian (language present in the song Your portfolio, as had already happened in the 2015 piece Disappointing), Spanish and Icelandic. And when it’s time to end the interview he says: “Good evening”, with a great Italian accent.

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