Jack Garratt

Despite the fact he has woken up a mere 30 minutes before his interview with the BRAG, the rising talent proves unbelievably chipper. This is a man who handles his press while blasting around Europe on a tour bus – a man who can juggle promo work and performing, all with the sleep still stuck in his eyes.

“It is pretty exhausting,” Garratt says, sounding like the least exhausted man on the planet, “but I’m also very lucky that I am with a team that I have been working with for a long time, since before all the press and the accolades. I’ve kept those people around me because I feel like that’s the most sensible thing to do. But they understand how physically and mentally exhausting the live show is for me, and so they try not to book up too many interviews while I’m out on the road … because it does tend to get too much.

“Like this year I went to America,” he powers on, “and I didn’t do any shows. I just went to America for a week and went around the Midwest and did loads of radio interviews and went straight from there to Europe and then [did] radio interviews in Germany. It’s great. It’s fun. You get to see the different cities and different countries in a totally different light.”

All this press is ostensibly in support of Garratt’s Phase, a pulsing collection of soul-soaked tunes the young musician wrote, produced and performed all by himself. But it’s also a way of selling Garratt, a task that must be as easy as selling heaters to Eskimos. After all, not only does the musician spit soundbites at a frenetic pace, he also speaks about his audience with a deep-seated affection.

“I make a lot of my music by myself … and performing is exactly the same,” he says. “I go up onstage every night on my own and play lots of different instruments and have fun playing these songs I’ve spent so much time caring over. It is really, really fun. It is tiring, and it is exhausting, [but] I love coming out on the road and meeting people.

“It’s at a point now where the crowds are wanting to come to the shows now because they like the music. Even having that kind of attitude to walk onstage to is so [great]. It makes everything – [all] the travelling and the late nights and the early mornings – totally worthwhile.”

To say audiences merely ‘like’ Garratt’s music is an understatement. Phase was a critical and commercial success across the world – not least of all here in Australia, where lead single ‘Weathered’ became a radio fixture. The album’s high international appeal means that Garratt has been able to experience crowds from almost every corner of the globe, though his upcoming Splendour In The Grass slot and associated sideshows will be the first time he has made his way to our shores.

Nonetheless, even though Australia has sadly been left off his tour itinerary until now – through no fault of his own, he promises – his trips have given him a fascinating insight into the variation in crowd etiquette across the globe.

“Audiences around the world are completely different,” he says. “In the UK, things are different only because my music is listened to a bit more in the UK and my name is more recognisable. But in America, even audiences from state to state can be drastically different. New York and LA are kind of renowned for being difficult audiences to win over, but when you win them over they’re so incredibly … supportive.”

Garratt admits that the stripped-back nature of his live show can occasionally prove problematic. It’s only him up there under the hot lights, after all, and he can only blame his successes and failures on himself. “Emotionally it’s nerve-wracking, because there isn’t that kind of support structure for me to fall back on if I need it,” he says. “If I stop, the show stops. If I miss a chord, it’s obvious. If I miss a beat on the kit, it’s obvious. But I’ve really come to enjoy that part of the show, that humanising quality.

“That’s the show for me, really. It’s all the mistakes and all the problems. And the crowd really love it when something goes wrong because it turns me into a person, whereas five minutes before I was an octopus to some of the people just because I do a lot of different things onstage.”

For Garratt, the key to a good gig is not in the theatrics. It’s not the stage lighting, or the projections, or even things like onstage banter or the physical exuberance of the performer. It all comes down to a simple matter of respect. “That’s why you hear nightmare audiences of people hating gigs they went to see because they felt like the performer onstage didn’t care, or was rude,” he says. “You hear those nightmare situations because that performer [didn’t] respect their audience.

“It’s a really important thing to me,” he continues warmly. “I do mean it when I say there are two bandmates. There’s me, and there’s the ever-changing second member … which [changes] depending on the 500 to 1,500 people in the audience. It’s amazing.”