Jake Bugg

The English singer-songwriter will be returning to Australia soon – his third visit – on Mumford & Sons’ Gentlemen Of The Road bill, and has new music appearing in the not-too-distant future. While there is genuine excitement in his voice when he speaks of these upcoming performances, there is also a touch of self-deprecating apprehension.

“I haven’t played a show all year really. The performer in me is hidden away right now, so he really needs to get his shit together before he reaches Sydney,” Bugg chuckles. “When I get on that stage, I feel like … I don’t examine it too much, but my brain switches. Maybe it’s a self-defence mechanism, I don’t know, but something switches to, ‘You’ve got to do this now, and you’ve got to nail it.’ Before I get onstage I’m jerking around and maybe uncertain. But the moment I get up there, everything changes.”

While these aren’t especially uncertain times for Bugg – at least, not from the outside – he is currently in the midst of the aforementioned album number three, a record that has already changed greatly over the last few months. Early commentary on the direction of his music saw Bugg describe it as being a much darker undertaking, which, given his lyrical catalogue of violence, heartbreak, knife fights and loss, really makes you wonder if the man needs a hug. Yet his reflections on how the album stands today finds a strikingly different tone; he has begun shaping a much more positive release.

“I think when I said that, I didn’t have the songs I do now, and it’s not as dark as I thought it was going to be. The record now, it’s got some grooves on it, man, maybe even some tracks that people can actually dance to. There are one or two darker elements in the record, but it’s changed a lot. That said, all of that dark stuff I’ve saved, and I would like eventually to make a really dark album that nobody will probably ever care about. But right now is not the time. I wouldn’t call them B-sides – I like them, and I think they’re good songs, but I know that a lot of people wouldn’t be crazy about them because it doesn’t have that commercial side. The stuff I’m working on now, some of it evolved from darker stuff. But most of it is fresh.”

Suffice to say, Bugg has come a long way from the 17-year-old playing Glastonbury in 2011. His music has grown a great deal since then, and his list of influences has deepened. While he still has an enduring fondness for the names that first set him on his musical path – singers such as Don McLean – these days he is more drawn to songs that stand on their own, regardless of the composer or the genre.

“As a songwriter I think [McLean] still has some great songs, though I probably don’t listen to him that much now. But he hasn’t been left behind, and since then I’ve gone on and listened to a bunch of other stuff from him. I was always listening to different things to everyone else. That was really during my teenager years, where there were these terrible bands out at the time. Those are the ones I left behind. There was a lot of hip hop around then, and then the complete opposite side of the spectrum, people listening to Slipknot and things like that. I mean, I like bits of both. If it’s good, it’s good, I don’t care what genre it is. Whether it’s a good song is the only thing that’s important.”

This tour will mark something of a departure from how Sydney audiences have enjoyed Bugg in the past. He is stripping back to basics, primed to deliver an acoustic set that will act as a fine counterweight to Mumford & Sons’ much-discussed electric shift. Chatting with Mumford banjoist Winston Marshall recently, he spoke of the band members’ need to have taken time out from writing and touring, to reorganise their thoughts and rekindle their passion. After nearly five years of the spotlight, I wonder if Bugg has found a similar need to hide away for a time.

“Maybe as I get a bit older I’ll find that,” he says. “Right now it does feel like this continuous thing. Making a record, touring the record, and I know there are people who have been doing that their entire life. I don’t know. For me, that may be so, but right now I’m just concentrating on making this album. I care about what it looks like; I’m not doing it just for the sake of doing it.

“You have to keep things fresh; you don’t want to sound just the same as the first time. You want each album to be different, where you’re trying to create something new. I mean,” he laughs, “you don’t want to be too different, and scare off the fans I already have. But I don’t want to make something just because people are going to like it because it’s familiar. People don’t really know what they want until they hear it.”