You Only Live Once

YOLO all you want, gang, but Andy Bull makes a good point: when do we forego our integrity to exist in such a potentially vacuous world? Bull doesn't appear totally consumed by cynicism, but his dismay at social media's exclusiveness is captured in his latest single, Baby I Am Nobody Now, a song he's described as exploring the emotions around “status (update) anxiety”.

“You are the one missing out; you are always the one who is not there,” he says. “Look at the people in that Instagram – they are doing great things, but not you,” he continues. Bull says it's ideas like these that form the accidental theme of his forthcoming album, due in 2014. The full-length will be the follow up to The Phantom Pains EP of 2010, and his popular collaboration with Lisa Mitchell, which produced the widely played track, Dog. Bull says the album is broadly about fear of missing out (FOMO), or perhaps more suitably phrased, it questions our need for “the desire for others' approval… the need for acceptance versus the need for integrity. That's been a dialogue that's been on my mind for some time,” he says, pondering. “Like, what is integrity? What do you actually own? The only thing I can come up with is that you can only own your attention, and what you focus on. Because everything else can change or be taken from you. If you engage too much with social media you risk chewing up your focus, and you start to put your focus on what other people think, or expect of you.”

Such self-awareness and a profound understanding of what it's like to exist alone is something Bull has known for a long time, as he admits that making music was “until my early 20s a totally solitary experience”. Starting more than half a decade before this turning point, Bull started making music at the tender age of 13, saying, “It just started as me writing songs in quite a traditional, person-with-instruments, singer-songwriter kind of way. I didn't have bands or anything like that, and I know a lot of my friends were lucky enough to play in bands when they were kids,” he continues. “I had a strange mix of emotions about music for a long time because it was sort of a solitary thing. It promised a lot. Playing music promised a future – a creative future – which I always wanted very badly. I burned for it.”

Bull now credits the absence of bands in his formative years as the beginning of life as a solo musician, saying, “It might be outdated now, but I just never saw [playing in a band] as an option. I had to start writing on my own and then that was the only way I knew how to do it. And you keep on doing it because it's your mode of operation.”

But now, ahead of the Baby I Am Nobody Now east coast tour, Bull can also recognise some of the values of being a solo artist. “I would say I really enjoy being around other people, so it makes sense that I'm a solo artist, because that way I can really confront the ambiguity of solitude. Because the rules surrounding being around groups of people are easy, but being on your own? It can be quite challenging. You really have to structure your thoughts and mind. It takes a lot to create meaning for yourself outside people,” he concludes thoughtfully.

A lover of tension and release in all its forms, Bull is not only stirred by the manifold contradictions of social media, but is also deeply inspired by what he terms, “the opposing forces in everybody”. Translating this into song, however, is not as easy as it seems. “I listen to a lot of music and I do think that some pop music can be a bit predictable. It can be boring, and leave you quite cold. Like, a big chorus is just not that interesting anymore… So I've tried to temper the big chorus explosion with lyrics that are a bit hard or in an alternate direction. Otherwise the tension and release can seem a bit, well, childish. But I'm constantly looking outside pop music to find answers to that.”

In a final and fitting spout of optimism, Bull says he's “really looking forward” to the forthcoming tour. It's going to be a “slightly different band that's together”, and with a tonne of keyboards, but he insists it's also going to be cool. “A couple of the shows have sold out already, which is pretty good, too.”