Ten Year & Six Albums Into His Career, Newtown Faulkner Reckons He's 'Hit The Ground Running'

Many musicians are defined by their breakout album. That initial impression is often the most impactful, becoming the bar against which everything else is measured. That doesn't mean it's their best, some take ten or more years and five or six records to truly hit their stride. Although some of his fans may disagree, British songsmith Newton Faulkner believes he very much falls into the latter category, and more than a decade on from breakout Hand Built By Robots he feels he has finally found himself creatively on sixth album, Hit The Ground Running.

"I was always looking for a sweet spot for years, on all the albums," he tells, "but I do feel like this one is my actual recorded sound. I think everything I do from this point onwards is going to be using this album as kind of a blueprint."

While some fans may disagree, many others are feeling that this is indeed the finest moment of his career so far. The reaction to the record has been well beyond expectations, even from live audiences who generally howl for their favourite tunes from Faulkner's back-catalogue. "The new stuff went down stupidly well on my last tour. I was actually getting heckled to play more new stuff, which I don't think has happened to anyone," he laughs. "It was genuinely shocking."

Aussie audiences will get to experience tunes from the new album in a live setting very soon as Faulkner is coming out for Byron Bay's Bluesfest, as well as doing a bunch of headlining dates of his own across the nation. But while Faulkner may consider Hit The Ground Running as some of his best work, he will not be neglecting past favourites in his live set either.

"I'll be going all the way back to the beginning," he reveals, "and pick out something from every record, I hope, I'm still deciding what I'm going to be doing in Australia. But I think I'll be doing a little bit of everything."

The new record is very easy on the ear and Faulkner feels that part of its charm comes from the live production he and his team went for on this album. "I tried to keep it very chilled on this one," he says. "The album before was kind of a lot bigger and more drums and bass. You can really feel the honesty of the performances, which really is the main thing worth capturing.

"There's no point in editing the bejeezus out of things, because it doesn't sound human anymore. It's a strange kind of battle, because I did edit things until they were perfect and then I pulled back a bit. At that point, it sounded so right."

It has been a full 11 years since Faulkner's debut dropped, something that he is slowly but surely coming to grips with, but is ultimately more than happy about. "I've got used to it now, but when it first started being said, it was terrifying," he admits. "But the fact that I'm still here and I've been doing my own thing the whole time is amazing. I've released six albums and people are still coming to the gigs. I don't know, you can't not feel good about that."

Even for someone with a double platinum album in their pocket, sustaining so fruitful and long-lived career in the deeply depressed musical climate is something to be justifiably proud of — although Faulkner does see some advantages in the way things have evolved during his tenure. "It's quite terrifying," he says. "So many avenues have... not so much closed, but completely morphed into something completely different. There's so many different ways of getting music out there, and it really is kind of a wild west type of excitement out there because there really are just no rules anymore. The old formulas just do not apply and that's kind of liberating in a way."

So has he got another ten years and six albums left in him? "I fucking hope so!" Faulkner laughs.