Hopeless Romantic

The mild-mannered Geoffrey O'Connor has been crafting meticulous pop tunes for years with his band Crayon Fields, yet it's in solo mode where he's been able to truly shine, embracing the moody catharsis of personal experience and crafting it into a suite of sounds steeped in longing reflection. His debut record of last year, Vanity Is Forever, occupies a strange middle ground where the familiarity of the tunes and themes about love in all its shapes and forms is tempered by a modern approach, eschewing the revisionist route for a more unique take on '80s-style balladry. It was O'Connor's intention to pay loving homage to these sounds yet keep them embedded in his own experiences in the here and now.

“I try to make contemporary electronic adult contemporary pop music,” he chuckles. “It has a synthetic feel, yet I'm totally comfortable about making them personal. I've always written songs about romance and love and melodrama, and they always surround circumstances that I've found myself in. That's how it's always been for me. I figure that there are infinite ways to describe those occurrences and there's plenty of material there. I can't think of anything I'd feel comfortable writing about to be honest. I don't take drugs, I don't have any interest in cars – this is it.”

O'Connor's fascination with the myriad facets of life proves to be a pastime, something that not only directly relates to him but has connections to everyone. “It harbours such a diversity of people's experiences, where people can have such fascinating experiences that are subject to everything else, the essentials of life. Love is essential.”

That said, there seems to be a tightrope in O'Connor's songs between reality and fantasy, whereby these experiences could be the figment of the listener's imagination. “Most romantic encounters are remembered with an element of fantasy, where this brilliant, dapper, articulate person lures someone; it's always much more beautiful in your imagination than it probably actually was. So when you reflect on those things they become stronger, more visually striking.”

Those who feel that there is a disparate fissure between O'Connor's solo works and that of his band Crayon Fields might be surprised that the writing process doesn't differ all that much. “Crayon Fields is definitely a pop band, but they're all love songs as well,” he admits. “I have a long standing relationship with the other members of the band, and I like writing songs and putting them together with them in mind, but now I feel that there are limitations to working with a band for some of my ideas. It's like having to play with the same instrument – you have the same set of voices and the similar ideas, you know what it can and can't do, and you shouldn't try to change that. But other songs I want string sections and synthesisers and electronic drums, and that wouldn't work with that band of guys.”

O'Connor will be armed with some new tracks from his forthcoming album, which sees him extrapolating on the charm of romantic encounters. “I think things will be more flamboyant this time around, with the BPM being around the 130 range rather than the 47 range. When I recorded the last album I felt that it should be that way, a little slower, but live I sped everything up. Things needed to be smooth, because I'd pretty much written an album of power ballads; it's not quite like that the second time around.”