The Gritterman

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The result is his new album ‘Hop Up’, its title being a buoyant, idiophonic representation of the spirit that it contains. Weeks wrote the songs at home before spending two sessions, each spanning three weeks, with the producer, solo artist and Deek Recordings founder Bullion. He helped Weeks hone in on a specific, open-hearted approach to leftfield pop: very natural, warm instrumentation manipulated in imaginative ways. Orlando Weeks: ‘We had a difficult time making the last Maccabees album, but the reason for the split is our thing’ You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here.

This is a classic that everyone has read or watched before — and most likely more than once as it has been successfully adapted into multiple movies and books. The Gritterman was initially conceived, explains Weeks, as a “self-contained project, I wasn’t looking too far ahead.” But, after the huge critical acclaim the book received upon its publication last year, it was clear that the project had a potentially long shelf-life. Orlando Weeks: This is the artwork for the new record. And I’m trying to think… I’ve been trying to figure out how to make something that will be like a special giveaway for people. I guess like a prize draw or something like that. For those Hop Up prints, I’ve been printing with lino onto cyanotype, and I think that’s how I’m going to do it. But this one here is straight onto the cyanotype. Fast forward two decades and Orlando Weeks, now 34, has embarked on a creative project which beautifully encapsulates his vision of a genteel, understated Christmas: The Gritterman.As the former Maccabees frontman releases his second solo album ‘Hop Up’, Orlando Weeks has spoken to NME about the making of the joyful new record. He recalls how, on his sixth birthday, he was permitted by his grandad to sound the whistle on a traction engine, a type of steam engine once used to move heavy loads on roads and to plough fields. “At the time, I wasn’t aware it was such a sweet gesture on grandad’s part, to let me pull that whistle. But I was the first person to do it, on an engine he had been restoring for longer than I’d been alive.” This tale emphasises the importance of kindness and compassion, manifested through ghosts of the past, present, and future that haunt a bitter Scrooge until, on Christmas, he finally decides to change his old ways. So what would his grandad think of the book? “I expect he would ask me: where is the manual where you learned to do this? He would find it odd that you just kind of do it, with your fingers crossed. But I know he would have respected how I feel about my work. And I think he would have been proud of me, and hoped that I was happy. He was a very kind man.”

It’s something I wish I’d done sooner,” he says. “For the last three, four years of touring with The Maccabees, during downtime, I’d write little stories and poems, and work on sketches. The Gritterman basically came out of that. I wanted to tell a seasonal story, but on a small scale. The main character in the story is an old man who goes out to grit roads in winter; it’s pretty unremarkable and unromantic. But there’s a beauty, a real humanity in those small stories. They’re my favourite sort of Christmas stories.” This tale of wonder is a beloved story from most people’s childhoods, remembered for its beautiful magic and a familiar nostalgia that will restore every reader’s childish and nostalgic excitement for festivity and Christmas. E.T.A. Hoffman really created a must-read for the festive season to get absorbed into the Christmas spirit. Sometimes it feels like I might be the only person awake in the whole country. People might find that a lonely thought. Not me...'Other artists that appear on the record include Heavenly Recordings signee Katy J Pearson, Willie J Healey and Frank Ocean collaborator Ben Reed. Working with other musicians allowed Weeks to hear what he’d been working on with fresh ears. “If someone else is doing it with you, it’s a lot easier to draw a veil over my insecurities,” he explained.

In a tiny, second-floor room in South London, Orlando Weeks has built himself a miniature world. A narrow space at the top of the house he shares with his partner and their son, it has the feel of a particularly creative teenager’s bedroom: posters, books and trinkets line every wall, with pieces of clothing hanging on the door and a small desk providing a studious focal point. This is the place he comes to write, print, stamp, draw and think. For Weeks, a huge fan of the Fast Show star, the chance to work alongside one of his all-time comedy heroes has been a dream come true. It’s an approach that’s encapsulated in the album’s first single ‘Big Skies Silly Faces’. Its choral, dream-like beauty makes focal points of aspects that might be swamped by a more boisterous production: the otherworldly vocal harmonies courtesy of Katy J Pearson, the heartening piano embellishments, how Ben Reed’s bass grows from a supporting texture to the forefront of the sound. Pearson is a musician that he has had a connection with for years, having written with her and her brother when they were in the band Ardyn. “Watching her rebuild everything out of the ashes of that project was amazing,” he said. “I think that’s a testament to her ability as a musician, but also this buoyant personality that she has.” That’s the album that will be the Orlando Weeks classic? “Yeah, just four stinkers and then one opus,” he laughed.

If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. Orlando Weeks: The megaphone is in the video for ‘Deep Down Way Out’. I guess I premiered ‘Deep Down’ and ‘Big Skies, Silly Faces’ with the BBC Concert Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall, and I used a megaphone there. I thought it might be just a good prop, but it sounded good. Arcade Fire always use them, and the Flaming Lips; I feel like that’s a good heritage that I hope to follow.

Orlando Weeks’ (The Maccabees) heartbreakingly poetic 2017 original score for his book ‘The Gritterman’ becomes our first ever Christmas drop; exclusively pressed to vinyl for the first time and limited to 1,000 copies. Weeks says the project was partly inspired by the similarity between his own circumstances and his father’s retirement. “I didn’t see my dad retire and think: right, I’m going to write an illustrated book. But I think it definitely played a part, along with beginning to question my own purpose and where my passions lie; thinking about how I fill my time, and seeing how he does. It’s very difficult, if you’ve invested in what you do, to allow yourself the freedom of not doing it any more, of not working all the hours that God sends.” There’s something about that that’s always stayed with me,” ponders Weeks, “the very English absurdity of making the most of a situation. The desperation for any potential silver lining. Really though I think Big Skies Silly Faces is about how I can be my own worst enemy - “No stopping that sky high as its wide ... my mind against my better thinking. know the feeling but wonder why...” Weeks credits Bullion’s class, taste and open-mindedness, noting that “I’ve never worked with anyone who had such an identifiable aesthetic to their own music. There’s a class to what he does that I really wanted this record to be a part of.” Wildly productive, the album was completed from start-to-finish in just seven months, whereas Weeks’ previous albums and work with The Maccabees could take two to three years. That was the most incredible thing ever,” Weeks gushes. “He sent me a message saying how much he enjoyed the book. Of all the things I've done, for Raymond Briggs to say he liked my book is maybe the proudest I’ve ever felt.”On the Maccabees’ first album, Weeks wrote a song, Good Old Bill, about his grandfather’s death. Listening to it now, the chorus line, “The engine won’t start without him”, seems to take on a new significance. Weeks explains the inspiration for the song: “My grandad left one of his traction engines to a steam museum in Cornwall. In his final years, he’d go and visit it and help with the upkeep, that sort of thing. On the day he died, my grandmother got a phone call. It was the museum. For the first time, the engine he’d donated wouldn’t start.” Orlando Weeks: I’m not technical at all. One of the things I like about making stamps or prints or books is that it’s very basic, very analogue. The whole process, from drawing to making things, is very straightforward. Say with stamp-making, it channels your attention and focuses you really nicely, because you’re using tools, and getting a gouge in your thumb with one of those is no fun.