An Honest Approach To Album Number Five

A lot of people know Kim Churchill for his 2014 hit, Window To The Sky. It came in 42nd position in the Hottest 100 and was all over the radio that summer. Chances are most people would know at least the chorus, and equal chances are that a lot more people may not know that the 'overnight success' was the result of Churchill having released three albums previously before Silence/Win broke through.

"It was kind of a nice payoff after so many years of work to have a song that just really stood up on its own legs and just walked off into the sunset, taking my career with it, in a good way," laughs Churchill. "So that was really cool. It was nice and it was a good confidence builder for me, like to know that I could write songs that resonate like that. I definitely felt a bit of pressure coming into this next album."

"I think that you know, when a song does something like Window To The Sky did, or what any single/hit/whatever you want to call it has, it's a life of its own, it's its own little micro-environment and there are so many variables that will never happen again and are totally enigmatic, so there's no point trying to sit down and construct that. It just happens if you're lucky and if the stars align. But it took me a while to [realise that], and that's why this album took me so long, because it was just kind of getting over trying to top that. Or trying to build some idea in my head that Window To The Sky was somehow better than a lot of other stuff that I've done, and it's not, really. Like I didn't even think it was the best song on the album, it just got picked up."

The new album Churchill refers to is his latest, Weight Falls. It was an interesting process for Churchill; he wrote an entire album, over an 18-month period, then at the last moment decided to scrap it and start over - he re-wrote, re-worked and re-produced what would become his fifth studio album in just on a week.

"I was feeling the pressure, and it was coming through in the music a bit. That other album is just very big, very grand, very powerful and bold for sure, but I just wanted something a bit more calm, I think, just trying a little less. It was very liberating, very odd, turbulent time to can an entire album like that, but it felt good and I wrote a new album in a week," he explains.

"I think if you've been lying to yourself for long enough, when you finally tell yourself the truth, you can really connect with honesty for a bit. You know, you can see everything clearly... You just interact with it with a deep sense of honesty with everything you do for a little bit, because you've been deprived of it for so long. And I wrote a lot of those songs in the week following that and I was really lucky; a very liberated little time."