Today, we’re thrilled to catch up with Arliston, the London-based duo who have been making waves with their signature melancholic stylings, punctuated by moments of joy. Comprising Jack Ratcliffe, the evocative vocalist and lyricist, and George Hasbury, the meticulous producer, Arliston is all about collaboration. Their knack for blending heartfelt storytelling with layered production is the reason why we’ve been drawn to their releases time and time again from their How In Heaven EP through to recent single ‘What Did I Think Would Happen’. In this interview, we explore the creation of their latest track ‘Disappointment Machine‘, delving into the surprising inspiration behind the main character in the music video and unpacking their songwriting process. Looking ahed to their upcoming debut album, Arliston shares how they strive for emotional depth while keeping listeners guessing. With an album launch set for the new year, 2024 has already proven to be a pivotal year for the duo. So without further ado, let’s dive in!
Welcome to Unrecorded! For those who aren’t familiar with Arliston, can you introduce yourself?
We are Jack and George and we write sad songs, and occasionally happy ones, but it’s mainly sad ones! Jack is the singer and somber song guide and George is the Producer. It tends to be a split down the middle but we can’t help but get involved in the other’s job, change a lyric here or add a guitar line there!
Let’s dive right in and talk about your new single ‘Disappointment Machine’. What inspired the title, and how does it reflect the themes of the song?
Well as the lyric suggests “at this point I’m just a disappointment machine” the human body is! We all go through these experiences, sometimes the body just dumps a load of hormones and chemicals into the mix and completely messes you up and reminds you that maybe you’re not as autonomous as you would like to believe. It’s a reminder that we are all just fleshy machines wondering around bumping into each other.
You’ve also shared a music video alongside ‘Disappointment Machine’. Why did you choose a monk as the central character? Were there particular cultural or personal references that informed this choice?
So this is the first music video from the album that George hasn’t made and it’s been refreshing to work with a larger team headed up by Freya Merriweather and staring a brilliant human, Cailum Carragher, rather than plasticine or toys as in the previous two. The monk came about when we were spit-balling ideas for the music video, we wanted to have a video that explained an angle of the song that maybe isn’t so immediately obvious. We wanted someone to experience a sort of grass is always greener moment and then realise that they had it pretty great before, and the obvious narrative would be a romantic relationship but Freya in reference to the first single from the album ‘Monks of Lindisfarne’ suggested it may be a crisis of faith and that is exactly the kind of twist we enjoy. The team did a fantastic job on this video and made something that we enjoy watching, so we hope everyone else does too!
As self-proclaimed “sad song specialists”, how do you strike a balance between emotive storytelling and keeping the sound fresh and engaging?
We are always trying new approaches to the way we write and produce, be that something as fundamental as a wonky time signature or as small as an instrument choice. When writing this album, Jack had a huge list of notes, phrases and sort of poems that he had jotted down in the notes app and so, for the first time, we were able to let the songs meaning guide from the beginning and that has led to a totally different feel to our previous EPs in which the emotions were dictated by the music first. We really don’t want to be the band that you can immediately pigeon hole, sure we have sad piano ballads but we also have resampled beats constructed of crazy synth stacks and then we have indie rock guitar songs, we like to think that our music has re-listen quality and even for a big fan, we put enough detail in that you might discover something new in the mix or the lyric on the hundredth listen!
Can you walk us through your songwriting process as a duo? How do you divide or share responsibilities like lyrics, melodies, and production?
It’s quite down the middle, George creating most of the music and Jack most of the melody and lyrics. But, with any collaborative process there’s a lot of cross pollination, and plenty of bickering “you can’t say that, no one will understand what you’re going on about” and “that piano line is a bit too close to Adele” spring to mind as something either one of us might say. A song normally starts with a sound that we like or a chord progression that one of us is noodling away at, once Jack has a melody line he’s sold on then that section becomes the seed for the rest of the track and we work forward or backwards from there depending on whether we think it’s a chorus or a verse. There are couple instances on this album of a sort of spontaneous song creation where George is playing the piano and Jack comes out with a fully formed lyric and melody, What did I think would happen (the first song on the album) is a good example of this, the whole song was all but finished in a matter of minutes all that was left to do was record it and remember what we just played!
Your influences include The National, Bon Iver, and Damien Rice. How have these artists shaped your sound, and what do you borrow from their approach to music?
Bon Iver is just a bit of a genius really, he’s got an amazing ability to make a seemingly random collage of sounds coalesce into a properly emotional gut punch, and that is something we are constantly striving for. The National is someone we get compared to a lot, especially because Jacks baritone vocal can be disturbingly similar to Matts, but a comparison to them always feels like an award. We must be doing something right.
As your debut album approaches its release, what are you most excited for fans to experience when they hear the record in full?
I think we’ve worked really hard to make each song as detailed and special as we can make it, our friends and family all have different favourites and we take that as a good sign! It’s got an narrative arc to it as a whole album, so if someone can spare the 45 odd minutes to listen cover to cover, hopefully they should experience the sort of emotional journey that Jack went on last year. There’s humour and light in the album and it’s probably the most open and authentically us work we’ve made to date, so hopefully listeners like what they hear!
What’s been the most challenging and rewarding part of creating and sharing this album?
The challenge has and probably will always be the pursuit of the perfect song, we have have an idea that it’s out there but we are also aware that we may never reach it and if we do the goalposts will always move further into the distance. So it’s a task to not constantly tinker and tweak songs. As for the most rewarding, it’s probably also in the writing stage, it’s probably the most addictive feeling going, neither of us have tried heroin so we can’t be certain, but when a song starts to click into place and suddenly it all comes into focus, it suddenly starts writing itself and it just flows. That is probably the reason we make music, chasing the song writing dragon.
What else do listeners have to look forward to through the end of 2024 and into early 2025?
We are having an album launch party show thing on February 6th, album release eve, at St Pancras Old Church in London and we’re working on making that a truly special show as a sort of thank you to our fans and people that have helped us get this album out. After that, we’re going to be playing live anywhere and everywhere we can, so keep an eye out!
You can also listen to ‘Disappointment Machine’ in our Shades of Pop and Outsiders Club playlist.
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