Richard Walters - Golden Veins (Acoustic) (2020) [Hi-Res]

With fifth album, Golden Veins, Richard Walters is both continuing and expanding on the musical career that has been garnering critical acclaim for more than a decade. And while it’s been 10 years since Walters – who’s originally from Oxford – released his debut full-length, The Animal, the nine songs that constitute this record reveal a truly original artist who is in a constant state of evolution and reinvention. From the outside, at least. Internally, it was a different story.

“In late 2015, I found myself in a strange place,” he explains. “I’d been making music since the age of 18, frequently full-time but occasionally not, and had hit something of a writer’s roadblock. Partnered with a slightly jaded perception of the music industry, I felt I’d come to the end of my creative run. I started considering my options and making moves away from the making of music. I founded a management and record company with a friend; I started promoting gigs again; I looked into degrees, teacher training, opening a bookshop, becoming a baker, and various other distractions. But the truth was, nothing made me care about it like writing music did, none of those things took me away from myself like singing did. But they did potentially make adult life possible, they made lots of things that seem to matter around the age of 32 seems doable – buying a house, owning a car, having children. I was comparing myself to other people my age and it made me feel like shit, like I was drifting, like I was being a bit selfish.”

In September of that year, however – one month before the release of Walters’ fourth album, A.M. – he and his wife found out they were expecting a baby. That – naturally – changed everything. “That was like a total rewiring for me,” he admits. “I didn’t have time to explore my options anymore, I just had to do what I knew, what I hoped I was good at. I went slightly mad around that time, pushing myself to write more, record more, network more and make it all line up. And it did; that was the start of a truly creatively fulfilling time in my life, but also a comfortably solvent period. I took a great deal of pride in the getting together of my shit.”

Creatively, too, Walters experienced of renewal of inspiration and energy, partly due to a conversation with the songwriter called Trent Dabbs. The pair were in Nashville on a writing trip and started talking about how proud Dabbs was of his latest record. When Walters asked what his secret to doing so was, the answer was something he already knew deep down, but which had been obscured by the demands and pressures that came with music being his source of income. Simply – make something you’d love to listen to.

“I know this sounds like the most fucking obvious concept in the world,” chuckles Walters, “but that idea of shutting out the potential audience or music supervisor or critic and just writing a record that makes your heart beat a little faster hit me hard.”

He returned to the UK and began digging through his collection to find the albums that had been formative for him – Cocteau Twins, Ride, Slowdive, Radiohead – and began formulating his own ideas, laid out simply with piano and vocals. He sent them to producer Patrick James Pearson, who’d send back “gorgeous, full productions.” The pair kept going back and forth, writing in their spare moments between work, father and family duties, and whatever else was happening in their personal lives. And then, at one point, it was done.

What strikes you first about Golden Veins – as always with Walters’ albums and songs – is his voice. Ethereal and beautiful, tender yet also defiant and strong-willed, Walters’ vocals are float above these tracks but also weave their way through the very fabric of them. Yet this time around, there’s one slight difference – a profound sense, despite an air of plaintive melancholy, of optimism.

“I definitely think becoming a parent and growing up a bit, I feel more rooted,” Walters says, “and a lot happier generally. Having kids has been a real driving force for me – I have to put food on the table now, and that inspires me and drives me to work harder. I feel like I live a really good life at the moment, and being a parent has given me a genuine hitherto unknown level of joy and contentment. But at the same time, outside of my own life, I still have a lot of anxiety about everything that’s going on in the world, and that came into the writing of these songs.”

That friction does indeed weave its way through this record – it can, at times, be as unsettling as it is comforting, but that conflict and contrast only serves to elevate the emotional resonance of these songs. Moreover, these songs reveal an artist who’s incredibly comfortable within his own skin, but who also isn’t afraid to step out of his comfort zone and experiment with taking these songs down unexpected paths that elevate the emotions and feelings that drive them. There is, for example, the rush of electronic beats that suddenly overwhelm opener ‘Dirty Empire’, the constant euphoric crescendo of ‘Big Joy’, the sonic minimalism of ‘The Dawn Chorus On Tape’, the hushed majesty of album closer (and first single) ‘This Is Where It Ends’. It all sounds like Richard Walters, but not necessarily the exact same Richard Walters.

“I think it was a bit of an identity reassessment doing this record,” he says. “I guess I’m officially middle-aged now that I’m 37 approaching 40, and I just felt a different drive about doing this record. Previously, I’ve always had in the back of my mind the idea that I’ve got to tick certain boxes, but this time I just felt like I wanted to make a record that I really wanted to listen to. I stopped my inner critic and just got on with writing something that I wanted to write. There was an element of just going ‘Fuck it – this feels exciting’ and not doing what I normally do and playing it safe.”

Some of that attitude has come from Walters’ experience writing for and co-writing with other artists, including Declan J Donovan, Alison Moyet, Way Out West, Simon Armitage and Apocalyptica, as well as collaborating with house producer Morgan Page and producer Guy Sigsworth.

“Seeing the ease with which established artists approach their work, as well as the blind enthusiasm and excitement that younger artists carry with them is very infectious,” he explains. “You see them writing and getting something back from it immediately. And that’s inspiring. I realised the more I put in, the more I’d get out, and that really changed my mindset when it came to writing this album.”

Lyrically, Golden Veins finds Walters venturing into new territory – namely because he doesn’t have the kind of heartache that first inspired him when he was starting out. As such, ‘This Is Where It Ends’ is an imagining of “a fictional Hollywood power couple breaking up and being watched publically and having to collapse with integrity, sympathy and empathy”, ‘Dirty Empire’ is a protest song inspired by the world around him, while ‘The Dawn Chorus On Tape’ is about his grandfather losing his sight and going into the woods to forever capture the sound of birds singing as day was breaking. Elsewhere, ‘Kintsugi’ uses the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer – resulting in the golden veins of the album title – as a metaphor for his relationship with his wife, Walters’ newfound sense of creativity and inspiration and the very nature of being human.

“When she and I got together ten years ago,” he says, “I was probably a bit of a mess. I was probably taking too many drugs and not living as well as I should and I felt very fragmented. I felt a bit broken, and she put me back together. But it’s also about rediscovering the joy in life and music again. It’s an art form that highlights the imperfections. For me, when I meet people I’m really happy to know that they’ve got flaws, because those are the things that make us interesting and make us stronger.”

That, if anything, is the very crux of this record. Golden Veins the sound of both an artist and a person reborn, re-inspired and re-invigorated – and a heartfelt reminder of just how beautiful and powerful and necessary thing that can be.