A weight off his shoulders

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This article was published 06/03/2018 (3092 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It was impossible for Australian singer-songwriter Kim Churchill to choose a more apt name for his sixth album, Weight_Falls.

After struggling with the record for 18 months — writing and rewriting songs, creating mix after mix after mix and still not landing on a sound that felt exactly right — he made the difficult decision to can the whole thing just two weeks before he and his label were set to sign off on the finished product.

“Right back at the beginning of the process of writing the songs, I had this slight odd feeling about it — it wasn’t quite right or I wasn’t doing good stuff or something like that. And normally those kind of doubts can come into a person’s mind and be considered and put aside and you just keep working hard… but I couldn’t shake this odd feeling,” Churchill, 27, explains.

“What I did in place was I tried really, really hard to make it as good as possible… like, I worked crazily hard on it for about 18 months, and the interesting philosophical discovery for me was, through trying far, far, far too hard and working far, far, far too hard, I kind of choked the project to death. And whether or not there’s any validity to my theory I’m not sure, but, like, 100 layers of paint doesn’t make a painting more beautiful, and that’s kind of where I was at.”

But once Churchill let go of those songs and those doubts and let that weigh fall off of his shoulders, he was able to refocus his energy into a new creation, and then new ideas began to pour out of him. When he initially nixed the album, he promised his label an album’s worth of songs in one week.

He was able to deliver.

“All these songs came out in that week that really felt honest and true to me,” he says.

“It was so euphoric, and I think as well, though I had been aware of those doubts, I had been telling myself everything I was doing was good and was fine. And I sort of knew deep down that wasn’t the case, so essentially I was lying to myself, and to lie to yourself for 18 months when you finally come clean, I think you get this unadulterated hit of honesty and understanding of who you are and that was euphoric — that release, I was riding high for a week or two,” he laughs.

And that foundation of honesty and organic creation is clearly evident on Weight_Falls; it’s immediate in its tone, at times feeling like a well-organized, fun, indie-folk jam session, while still maintaining sparkling technical elements that come, in part, from Churchill’s years of classical guitar training in his youth.

Despite the fact Churchill says he relies less heavily on fancy guitar work than he has on past records, there are some truly stunning moments; on Golden, he takes an impressive solo that is swift and intricate; on Goes Away, the acoustic-guitar-driven melody is bold and bright.

“The more and more I learn about songwriting and myself and communicating music to the world, the more simple my guitar playing gets,” he says, adding that his technical training has both helped and hindered him in unexpected ways.

“In terms of my songwriting, I think it’s kind of been a bit of a hindrance, especially in the early days; I was so proud of my ability on the guitar I wanted to make sure every piece of music I wrote was really showing off those abilities, and that kind of got in the way of just communicating a feeling or emotion,” he says.

“But the thing that was helpful about it was I was busking a lot on the street, trying to get seen, to get overseas on tour and stuff like that, a lot of that flashy guitar playing gave me an audience and people would book me because I was young and an exciting guitar player. And so that was really helpful.”

And one of his first overseas stops was Canada; in the nearly 10 years since his debut visit here, Churchill has toured across the country multiple times — including a couple previous stops in Winnipeg — and has developed quite a devout and supportive fanbase.

“I have been very lucky over here. In the early years — I think I was 18 or 19 the first time I got to come over here and start playing shows and it went really well and I signed my first record deal in Canada, and I’ve been really fortunate to call it a second home,” he says.

“It’s been one of the greatest gifts in my life, really, to explore this wonderful country.”

erin.lebar@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @NireRabel