Copy that sparks change

Every so often whilst trawling YouTube wading through the countless cats playing piano, you find something special, something worth watching. Like me, and 700,000 other people you may have thought Sivu’s video for ‘Better Man Than He’ was worth watching. Filmed in an MRI scanner in St. Bart’s Hospital, London the video lets you see inside his mind, literally a cross section of his brain as he sings. But aside from his multitude of exceptional music videos (go look if you don’t believe me) his music has really taken off. October last year saw the release of the 27 year olds debut album, ‘Something On High’ a record he has been extensively touring for the last six months. I met with Sivu at Oporto, the Leeds stop on his own headline tour to talk about his extensive touring regime, the process behind his album and the possibility of a second.

‘Something on High’ has an incredibly distinctive sound. The songs are tender, hard hitting and the arrangements flawless. Its like a sonic journey filled with ambience and space that will blow you away. I asked Sivu, real name James Page whether this was a natural process for him. ‘No not at all’ no um-ing and ah-ing just straight answers from the Cambridge born musician. ‘I just went there with acoustic songs’. By there Sivu means he and by he, Charlie Andrew, the producer behind the record and the man Page says really ‘helped take the songs to a different place.’ For those of you who bother to learn producers’ names you will recognise him as the mastermind behind both of Alt J’s award winning records. He met Andrew whilst doing session work. ‘We got on really well’ he says, whilst under constant watch of gathered fans waiting to meet him. ‘He was definitely an important part of it’ he continues ‘We liked the idea of using real strings, we liked the idea of using little teeny electronic sounds and brass’, all of which are in abundance on the record and mould together to form a style individual to him. ‘We kind of developed it from there. And then, yea, it was definitely an experiment and it took ages.’

You wouldn’t necessarily expect to hear what you get at his shows. Compared to the dense layers and textures of the album his current shows are very stripped back. Accompanied by guitarist Lucy Parnell Sivu conducts his tour as a two-piece. Together they manage to not recreate but re-imagine the record simply allowing the songs to speak for themselves, something on which I complimented him ‘It translates really well’. ‘I was worried about that so thank you very much. Its actually been really fun to completely pull it back.’ However, it hasn’t always been this way. Last year, before his first headline tour Leeds University played host to his four-piece band during the Live At Leeds festival, an all weekend celebration of the UK’s best talent scattered around some of Leeds’ best venues. ‘In hindsight really we should have done it the other way round I think.’ He muses. ‘We should have started more stripped back and then kind of progressed as a live show. I think we kind of got it wrong really. Hindsight’s a brilliant thing.’

Sivu may believe that there could have been a better way to go about it but there is no arguing the result of a simpler sound is breathtaking. The simplicity gives his songs room to breath. The style perfectly supports the tender tone of his voice and provides as much depth to the tracks as the album does. A 100-cap venue like Oporto is the perfect place to see him like this. The intimacy of the venue is ideal for the way his music is presented. I asked whether he did prefer these intimate shows. ‘Do you know what, right now, I really do yes. I think because playing the live full band shows was really fun but like I don’t think people really connected with it and engaged with it as much as they do now.’ And there is a lot of engaging going on at a Sivu show. The room is in absolute silence apart from the singer himself. It seems as if people really embrace the songs and connect. He is in no doubt about how he wants to present his music; ‘I think for the foreseeable future doing the shows like this is how we will do it.’ Occasionally the silence of the crowd is broken, a few revellers are not afraid to sing the words back to Page as he sang them to us. It is clear that people now know the album very well but its not what he really expected, ‘when the album came out it didn’t really do anything, in terms of chart success so I was doing these tours and thinking who the fuck is going to come. So it’s been really nice man. To be honest people just coming and singing the songs is the best feeling so its been really nice.’ People do turn up to Sivu’s shows and whilst he is still doing what he does they always will.

It is safe to say 2014 was a good year for James Page with a remarkable album under his belt and growing popularity in the UK so I asked the question everyone should be asking ‘what can we expect from Sivu in 2015?’. Well, ‘this ends at the end of March (his UK headline tour) then European shows. We are playing a shows in Romania in Bucharest which is cool and then we are doing a show in Paris, some festival stuff and then we are also doing some shows in Spain and a couple of others in Europe. Hopefully in Switzerland, just really little shows again. I’d really like to do festivals again but if we did festivals we wouldn’t be playing bigger stages than we did last year. We wouldn’t be playing new festivals so we thought okay lets not bother. Lets wait, do another album.’ Yes it seems another album is most definitely in the works. ‘The plan is to have it finished by the summer and put it out next year.’ he continues, ‘Well, no one has discussed that but that’s what I want to do.’ I personally can’t wait to hear new material from someone who has already accomplished so much. It seems things are only getting bigger and better for Sivu.