An Album Born Of Harder Times

The release of album number two was long time coming for Tim Wheatley. No, literally, a long time coming.

"It was a long wait, [I] finished it a long time ago, like nearly six months ago - and so I've just been waiting around, waiting around, for the right time to do it. I was desperate for people to hear it and it was actually sort of an anxious time, you know, between where there's nothing to do and everyone just says wait and everything will sort itself out, and I just felt like there's more I could be doing," explains Wheatley.

"It was just the timing of the release, and stuff like that. That was basically the only real thing. But it was sort of hard to start anything else as well in the meantime when you've got this, something so important to you, looming. I feel a lot better now that it's out."

The album Wheatley refers to is his newly released Pillar To Post, an album that was "born of harder times" than his 2015 solo debut, Cast Of Yesterday.

"Cast Of Yesterday was sort of complied without really knowing what I was doing. This time round, I was struggling a little bit in Los Angeles, missing home a great deal. LA didn't provide everything that it promised for me, it rarely does," he laughs.

"And my fiance and I were not quite as far along as we wanted to be and as a 32 year old, I went, 'am I as far along as I want to be?' All these questions and doubts, and then of course, like I said before, I had six months to sit down and think about all that after it was done. And that's the last thing you need. It was a lot harder for me, just personally, getting this stuff out. But as a writer, it helped me dig a little bit deeper. I don't necessarily always assume that the best writing comes from your own personal torment or anything like that. I think a lot of people can write a lot better when they're happy. I just don't need to write when I'm happy because I'm busy enjoying myself. That's the only difference, I'm sort of distracted by the good times.

"Last album was like a scrapbook of everything. It was almost like a best of, without, you know, without assuming it was that great," he chuckles. "This one here was my first attempt at doing something as a body of work cohesively. The next time, [I want to do something] just completely from scratch, devise something and try to get it all done in one sitting and you always want to develop the sound a bit more but I still haven't figure out exactly what I want to develop to that sense and see how that goes as well."