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Sometimes you need to look at the bigger picture in order to find clarity. In the case of British musician RHODES, it took a more fragmented style of songwriting to learn new things about himself, and to produce the most cohesive, definitive statement of him as an artist to date.
Due for release in early 2024, new album (un-finished) is an astounding collection of songs that sees the Hertfordshire-born, London-based artist turn the lens on himself. The music – swirling synths, tenderly picked guitars, stark piano and ghostly harmonies – provide the canvas upon which he paints with broad, abstract strokes. Yet they still cut deep, evoking long-buried memories of childhood, daydreams, hidden fears and insecurities.
“All of these songs were formed from conversations about life,” he explains. “I realised that the people around me, the ones I’m closest to, they all carry a weight or some kind of trauma from childhood. Talking with them provided a very cathartic and beautiful way of writing songs, as well as for processing a lot of turmoil.” He found himself remembering the records he grew up on and thinking about the safe place they offered. “We all read into lyrics in our own way, and that’s the beauty of art.”
It was, in fact, a painting that first inspired RHODES to think differently about how he approached his songwriting. Wandering around a Lucien Freud exhibition, he found himself enraptured by one self-portrait, left deliberately unfinished. “There was something about being able to see this work in progress, to see the pencil lines and what was going on beneath the surface,” he recalls. “That affected me really profoundly. I realised that we’re all ‘unfinished’, in a way, and if we stop being afraid to show that, show the scars, it can lead you to something that’s altogether more rewarding.”
So on the opening track “How I Love You” – the first song RHODES wrote for the album – you hear the softest whisper of guitar strings and murmurs in the studio before the song begins. The instrumentation is sparse, delicate. “Everything is changing,” RHODES sings. “We’re so fragile in the way we break/ And all these fading faces/ Some friendships come and go the same.” The song opens with a tentative beauty, like frost melting from a blade of grass in morning sun. A moving expression of love and commitment, it speaks to the moments when he began to feel distant from the ones who cared about him most: “We all love in our own way, but it starts with openness and honesty.”
It’s astonishing to hear such emotional acuity, considering the tumultuous past few years RHODES has experienced. Originally signed to a major label, through which he released his critically acclaimed 2015 debut Wishes, he disentangled himself from that deal after feeling he was being pushed in a direction that, artistically, was all wrong. Early reviews had hailed him as a musician only “just beginning to touch the edges” of his talent – drawing comparisons with peers including Hozier and Lana Del Rey – while a duet with Birdy on “Let It All Go” has received close to a quarter of a billion streams.
His follow-up, 2023’s independently released Friends Like These, was described by critics as “stunning” and “gripping” in equal measure. Produced with Rich Cooper (Billie Marten, Rina Sawayama), it prompted Official Charts to champion single “Good to You” as “an emotionally vulnerable, orchestral-tinged pop ballad”, wracked with the fear of losing someone you can’t live without.
“It’s weird, but I had been struggling creatively with the last record,” RHODES says. “There was a lot of back and forth with the label [before], and it became quite stifling.” As an artist, his goal is always to write songs that have meaning, “to put meaningful work out into the world”. Yet he found himself in a situation where he was being encouraged to abandon that, even as it earnt him a string of headline shows, a Glastonbury Festival booking, and opening spots for Sam Smith and London Grammar.
“It was that side of the industry that’s easy to get lost in, maybe a little toxic,” he says. “I like things when they’re a bit more mysterious, and at this point it felt like I was out of my depth. But actually what happened was the best thing for me, and I do like to believe that everything happens for a reason. It always leads you to where you need to be.”
(un-finished) follows RHODES as he tries to unravel the events of the past few years, getting to the core of who he is both as an artist and as a person: a husband, father, friend and son. “My parents split when I was quite young, and I think I struggled to process that as a kid,” he says. “There was a lot of running away from issues, and I retreated inside of myself, growing up with quite a distorted view of certain things.”
On “All I’ve Ever Known”, he sounds isolated and afraid as he dwells on what he’s been taught to believe: “How can I keep you close/ When all I’ve ever known/ Is love will go.” Then, on “Toothpaste”, he reflects on his younger years, as a twenty-something scared and lost in a hedonistic world. In the verses you’ll witness glimpses of those darker times, before the chorus arrives like daylight breaking through the clouds: “I’ll tell you a secret that’ll teach you to face that same pain/ I’m scared, but I am not afraid.”
Meanwhile “Happy”, the album’s first single, was borne from a conversation with RHODES’s wife, questioning the pursuit of happiness and how easily we become consumed by the pressures in life. “There are so many things going on in the world at the moment, we’re confronted by them every day on social media, and I wanted to ask myself, ‘Why am I not happy?’” he says. “And realising, maybe it’s already mine, and I just need to open my eyes to it.” So “Happy” revels in the fleeting moments that stay with us, and – on a chorus of startling beauty – asks, don’t we deserve to be happy now? Don’t we owe it to ourselves?
“Sunlight”, with its piano notes falling gracefully like spring blossoms across the water, is arguably the most vulnerable RHODES has ever sounded. His voice is an aching falsetto – a hymn for the person he feels closest to, who takes care of him. In a way it’s an admission, that as much as much gratitude he holds, there’s just as much fear for the effect it will have on them, too. “I’m scared of life and scared of dying / I’m a bird of prey with a fear of flying,” he sings. In the lyrics, the listener will be struck by RHODES’s almost brutal self-awareness, as he confesses to conflicting parts of his nature.
Influenced by great songwriters such as Jeff Buckley, RHODES allows moments for the album to breathe, on interludes including “Being in the Sky”, which was titled in honour of his young son. Andalusian and Latin-influenced guitar-picking lifts the song on a spring breeze, sending it soaring into the chorus with euphoric purpose. On “Don’t Cry”, he comes face-to-face with a near-death situation that occurred during a family holiday, and the dark thoughts that surfaced in the split second that a decision had to be made. “Don’t cry,” he calls, enveloped by layers of gospel-style backing harmonies. “I sit and watch it all just fade away.”
“I shut myself away for a long time, but I’ve since tried to re-discover the person I was when I first started making music,” he says. “It’s easy to forget why we do this.” Into (un-finished), he has poured each and every doubt, struggle, fear and panicked thought, and in the process coming to terms with it all. Like Lucien Freud, RHODES is painting his subjects with all their flaws and imperfections right there for all to see. And like those works of art, they’re still beautiful. Still real.
