Charlotte's web
Peter Murphy catches up with former Ash guitarist Charlotte Hatherley to talk about 'crazy woman's music', writing songs and collaborating with XTC's Andy Partridge.
Peter Murphy, 15 Mar 2007
Plucked from the obscurity of minor league bands like Sister George and Night Nurse, West Londoner Charlotte Hatherley found herself, still a teenager, thrust into the spotlight in 1997 as Tim Wheeler’s guitar-playing and visual foil in Ash. It was quite the fiery baptism: nine years of relentless touring and three full albums (Nu-Clear Sounds, Free All Angels and Meltdown).
Crucially though, Hatherley also found time to develop her songwriting skills, the fruits of which made up her debut solo album Grey Will Fade (2004), a respectable collection of power-pop nuggets that included the singles ‘Kim Wilde’, ‘Bastardo’ and ‘Summer’, conceived with the help of Eric Drew Feldman, formerly a member of Beefheart’s Magic Band, and PJ Harvey drummer Rob Ellis.
A little over a year ago, Hatherley handed in her Ash cards and decided to go it alone. This month sees the release of The Deep Blue, a quantum leap on from the debut in terms of songwriting and sonic ambition, a sprawling aquatic soundscape, stitched with mythic and elemental imagery that suggests Hatherley may in time reach the dizzy artistic heights achieved by her idols Kate Bush and David Bowie.
“I think the biggest influences were records like Mercury Rev’s Deserter’s Songs, The Soft Bulletin by The Flaming Lips, Hounds Of Love by Kate Bush,” she says, sipping a hot toddy in the bar of her Wexford Street hotel prior to a Dublin date in The Village. “Todd Rundgren is another inspiration, we were listening to him a lot. I absolutely wanted to do something that was a record from start to finish. With Grey Will Fade, there were a few songs that I’m really proud of, but as a whole this had to be a much more consistent, much more thoughtful piece of work.”
Presumably it focuses the mind at the demo stage to know she’s going to have to present the material to musicians the calibre of Feldman and Ellis?
“Yeah, what I did, same as Grey Will Fade, was do everything at home with Pro-Tools, I wrote all the guitar parts and most of the backing vocals. And then I went to Eric and we arranged it together. Basically we took out most of my guitar parts and he wrote keyboard parts.
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