Interview: 'We Made an Album By Mistake': Hadley Fraser Talks Latest Studio Recording THINGS THAT COME AND GO

As the release of his third studio recording, "Things that Come and Go" approaches, BroadwayWorld sat down with Hadley Fraser to discuss music, his influences, what he listens to, and what music means to him. 

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Can you tell me about your relationship with music? Who do you listen to? What do you use it for?

I must have been 14 or 15 and we were asked in our English lessons to write a report on our favourite possession. I wrote about my favourite possession being music and I remember my English teacher, whom I'm still in contact with from time to time, sort of saying it doesn't work like that, you've tried to be too clever; you need to talk about something physical.

I remember thinking I don't really care about anything more than music, I'm sure I was trying to be way too clever and she was probably right, but I think there's some truth in that. There's not much in my life other than my family and the people I love that’s really important. There's not much that's more important than music to me. What do I listen to? A great spread. I listen to pretty much anything other than - shall we say - incredibly full on dance music. That's probably the only thing I don't necessarily listen to, but I've gone through stages of listening to everything in my life.

These days I listen to classical music and jazz more than anything else, but I've gone through periods of listening to metal and folk and rock and world music and pretty much everything. Louis Armstrong said that there are only two types of music: good and bad and I think he was probably right. 

How does the music that you listen to inform the music that you make? 

The music that I’ve listened to over the years has informed the music and the albums that I've made. For my first EP, I was probably listening to a lot of folk at the time. The second recording - the first full length album I did - I was listening to an awful lot of jazz. This album is the consequence of a great confluence of influences. A great amount from the [Great] American Songbook, jazz, musical theatre. I think what I'm listening to will always influence what I make to a certain degree, but it's also always slightly historic. You can never exactly respond in the moment.

We recorded this album in the summer of 2023, so it's taken it a while to come out. I suppose the only thing I don't listen to a great deal is musical theatre, I do listen on occasion to some, but it's not the thing that I gravitate towards. I don't know why that is, it's not because I think there’s a lack of value in it. It's more because I think it exists in a space where you're supposed to see it while you listen to it, rather than just listen to it. 

This is your third recording; do you think they all tie in together? Or are they separate works of art?


They're different and disparate in their influences and in their inspirations. The first one was influenced by folk a lot, there was a big folk scene that I was into at the time. I think storytelling goes through all of them, if there’s a sort of thread there, it's the idea of stories, but I think each explores different things...People reinvent themselves the whole time and I find it quite inspiring.

Tell me about the conception of the album. How did it come together? 

There's a great quote in Withnail and I, Richard E. Grant and Paul McGann's characters knock on the door of a farmhouse and say they've gone on holiday by mistake. I slightly feel like we've made an album by mistake. It came through a friend and colleague, Donald Anderson, who's a big theatre supporter and producer. He wanted to put together a bigger project [Odysseys], which might still see the light of day at some point, that incorporates spoken word and music.

It's got lots of poetry, lots of Edgar Allan Poe, speeches from politicians, all centred around a theme. He came to me and he said that he wanted to put this project together and asked if I could put some music together. Of course I’d love to! We share a common interest in the Great American Songbook, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Ella Fitzgerald, all of those wonderful artists. We recorded this initially as an accompaniment, or at least to intertwine it with the spoken word of that initial project, which has sadly been delayed.

So, we were left with this archipelago of music, which is what this album is really. I think it stands up as an album in its own right, we had some wonderful people on board. It became its own thing due to the strength of the talent that we had working on it. So, yeah, we made an album by mistake, but I'm very, very proud of this mistake.

Looking back at the two previous recordings that you've made, did you approach this one differently with another different mindset?

I guess so, because it was more of a collaboration. I mean the previous recordings were self-motivated and self-released, for starters. This one was much more of a collaboration and probably done on a bit more of a professional scale. In times gone by I just released music and it was just there. We've got Westway Music on board for this one, they’re distributing it, so, obviously, it's a bit more of a professional outfit.

How did you choose the tracks that went into it? Did you have to whittle it down to ten?

Don and I sat with a few ideas for a while. There were a couple that we always had in mind. Then Sam Young - our orchestrator-arranger-producer-all-round-whizzkid - came on board and we spent a couple of afternoons singing through some songs and choosing those that came together and felt like a cogent whole, thematically and musically.

There are some old standards, things written in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and then there are some that are a tiny bit more modern, you know, songs from the 2000s. I think we alighted on them quite quickly, the challenge for us was to make them feel contemporary and fresh and not to regurgitate them.

I didn't want to do a swing album with me on the front cover with my bow tie untied and a Capital Records microphone in hand. I didn't want it to feel like that. I wanted it to feel like something that takes these standards and freshens them up a bit.

The track "How Glory Goes" suggests there's a melancholic line throughout the album. Was it intentional?

I would suggest that the music I listen to and the music that I feel happy performing is probably more in a sort of ballad style rather than the idea of melancholia. I guess I'm not too much of an uptempo guy. I had to dig deep to find a couple of up-tempo tracks for the album because it's not my natural territory. For the record I did with Will Butterworth [the album "Lights Around the Shore"], we just allowed ourselves a bit of a carte blanche and we just made an album of ballads. This one has a couple of up-tempo numbers, but I think there’s a streak of regret that goes through it emotionally and semantically. A streak of regret and love lost.

That sort of brings it back to the original inception or the original idea, the spoken word stuff was about that, the idea of longing, pining, that kind of thing. Songs like "Goodbye” are all about saying farewell to something and what that leaves you with, whether you want to relive it or not and whether that's even possible in life. Everything has its season, I'm drawn to things that have seasonality, I suppose. Ironically, I'm drawn to music that has a kind of mesmeric quality to it, where there's a repetitiveness that allows this meditative state of melancholy to infect the music.

Brad Mehldau, the jazz pianist, a great favourite of mine, refers to it as having pedal points, repeated patterns, and ostinatos. To come full circle, Adam Guettel [composer of Floyd Collins] taps into that really, really beautifully, he's such a talented writer. 
There’s an inherent sense of loss and melancholy within the framework, within the DNA of his music and lyrics. 

You mentioned your collaborators and I wanted to ask about the arrangements.

I can't claim any responsibility for the arrangements in this album. It’s all Sam Young, who I'd worked with very briefly on a live stream I did with Ramin [Karimloo], one of our From the Rehearsals’ streams. Sam came in with 24 hours notice and he was such a talented guy. I found his piano playing brilliant, mesmeric, so responsive to the voice. When we were first thinking about the album we asked him to be involved and thankfully he said yes. I don't think we’ll be as lucky if another album comes along, I don't think I'll even be close to getting him, his star is on the rise. He's such a talented guy.

I'm hoping we'll be able to do an album launch gig at some point, hopefully I might be able to entice him to come and play with us because he's fantastic at that.

Going back to the arrangements and the orchestrations, 
I think Sam would probably say that one of the challenges for him was that these are quite simplistic songs. "How Glory Goes" might be the exception because it’s a bit more of a long form piece of drama, I suppose, as opposed to a standard that has a more regular structure. I think Sam's challenge was to add more purpose, or at least more breadth, more scope into some of these songs. And he's done that, I think.

The press release mentions the ‘Odysseys’, is that something that you can talk about?

It's probably something that a distribution company might have to get their heads around a little bit because of its style. The idea of spoken word tied to music was something that I was playing around on my last record, "Lights Around the Shore". I did a couple of poems intertwined with some of the songs and I really loved that.

I'm not trying to do a radio musical or anything like that, but I love the idea of connecting spoken word and music. There's something about the dissonance or the collaboration between those two things whenever you put them together that I find really, really powerful. 


It's the first time you're on the cover of an album. How did that discussion go? 
Were you excited? Because that's a rock star cover.

[Laughs] My natural inclination would always be to do something else. Don was like, no, you need to be on the cover, you idiot. And Westway agreed as well. I suppose there’s this idea of the album having a bit more of an identity with me on the cover. I was lucky that a photographer friend of mine, Sergei Sarakhanov, he very fortunately agreed to come and take some shots for me. I did that reluctantly, but I understand the reasoning behind it. I mean, it's a good cover. I'm really pleased with it. What I didn't want was ‘Hadley plays Frank Sinatra’. Maybe in the future, sure, yeah, but I think we've had enough of those.

Let’s go into some rapid-fire questions. What’s your favourite instrument to use in music?

Probably the piano because it is so versatile. It can stand alone on its own but it can be part of the bigger ensemble.

What's the latest record or artist that you played for yourself? 

A Portuguese artist called Maro. I find her music sensational.

What was your Spotify Wrapped like?

It was absolutely ruined because I have an eight year old girl who listens to Zombies and Parry Gripp. Do you know Parry Gripp? If you don't, you're a lucky person.

Which albums are you taking on a desert island?

I would probably have a Kurt Elling one, I don’t know which. I think I'd have to have some Brad Mehldau in there, he put out a new album very recently. He's such an incredible artist, he does everything from straight-down-the-line jazz to very froggy electronica and classical piano. His new album is called "Après Fauré", which is him playing Gabriel Fauré alongside tunes of his that are influenced by him.

Then, Snarky Puppy, they play instrumental symphonic funk. There's an album of theirs called "Sylva", it might have to be that. Some Fleet Foxes too, maybe "Helplessness Blues" or just their original album "Fleet Foxes". There'll have to be some classical too, maybe some Arnold Bax. I’ll probably change my mind tomorrow if you ask me again, but there you go.

Let's leave this on three adjectives to describe the album.

Oh! You’d think I’d have these at the ready. I would say lush… thoughtful... It's not really a word that describes it, but let’s go with the time of day that feels like the right time to listen to it. I would say dusk or twilight. Let's go with those, I'm happy with those for now.

Things that Come and Go is out on 7 February. Pre-order and pre-save here.

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