Four Five: An Interview with Sweet Williams

Of course there are many ways to celebrate a birthday, but Sweet Williams’ Thomas House has gone to the next level.

Today the Zaragoza-based songwriter turned 45, and what better way to commemorate a birthday than to announce the latest Sweet Williams album? Yup, Four Five, the triple LP consisting of – you guessed it, 45 songs –  is set for release on April 4 via Wrong Speed Records.

Four Five follows Sweet Williams’ excellent 2023 self-titled long-player, which featured in our Top 50 Albums of 2023, and early indications suggest that House’s latest offering will come into those calculations at this year’s end, too.

Produced and mixed by House alongside Carl Jehle, Four Five is À la carte Sweet Williams. At just over two hours, like a gripping film, time flies by. The epic opener and lead track, Ghost Jury, written on the back of a botched dental procedure that ended in House having to source an emergency dentist 24 hours later, it’s the first of many gruelling twists and turns during Four Five – essentially a Best of Sweet Williams without actually being that.

Also featuring vocalists/lyricists Alessia Lee (Moper and Little Numbers), and Sergio Segura Sanchez (Chatarra), the highlights are endless. The slowcore-in-reverse majesty of Waiting for Nobody and The Blank Woman. The dream grunge of Ancient Six and Even Funnier. The off-the-beaten-track oddities such as Hammering Service and New Low.

Elsewhere, Send Rope is something likened to a ’90s battle between Richard Adams and Mark E. Smith somewhere along the M62 between Manchester and Halifax, while the freight train rumble of Scaping Goat is a distant echo of EVOL-era Sonic Youth.

There’s blueprint Sweet Williams, too. There You Go, Rope Science and Ex Light, beautiful reminders of the project’s past, while Wire Fencing and Very High Frequency sees House smashing that past together with the present. And closing with the warped electric folk of Dio Trick (featuring Simon Kaye on synths), it’s a worthy sign-off. House, shedding yet another new skin.

Four Five is the album House was destined to make. Sweet Williams, a concern faintly obscure and sometimes hard to place, it’s always been the project’s greatest charm in lulling the listener back for further examination. Four Five is an ode to that. Grainy and honest songcraft that moves mysteriously with the first thought often being the best.

Over the past couple of days since the details of Four Five emerged, House answered some of our questions about the forthcoming release and the process behind it.

Sun 13: I actually can’t remember when someone last wrote a triple album! Was it always the intention to release this as one album, or did it just work out that way?

Tom House: “I’d been writing on and off since the last LP and sending tracks to Joe [Thompson] and Chris [Summerlin] with no real idea where it was going. Which is odd ’cos usually I get songs together and figure out an order pretty quick. We were joking about releasing The White Album, even like getting an old battered White Album sleeve and crossing out all the info and sellotaping a collage on it and scanning that for the artwork, and then The Rebel did almost exactly that. And then I had this nerve taken out of my tooth, but they fucked it up and I woke up on Easter Thursday, when everything’s closed in Spain, in the worst pain I’ve ever had in my life, I couldn’t find an emergency dentist but then my boss got one for me (thank you Ana you lifesaver).

“After the dentist had fixed the mess they’d made I was wacked on these really strong painkillers and a bit traumatised, and I spent twenty-eight hours making Ghost Jury. The cat had to wake me up off the table and send me to bed. I sent that tune in and Joe and Chris said, ‘Look, you’re forty five next year, do a forty five song record for your birthday, it’ll be mental!’ So then it was a question of taking all this stuff I’d been working on and finishing it off and working out what was going on the record and how to fit it together.”

S13: With so much music, how long did it take to write Four Five and was it written based on a strict routine?

TH: “It wasn’t so much a strict routine as just working on it whenever I had time, which was all the time last summer ’cos I didn’t have much teaching work. I worked out after the fact I was doing about sixty hours a week on it from the middle of July until the end of August, which was probably for the best ’cos I would have lost my mind in the fucking heat otherwise. Again, I like to think I’m highly disciplined but the flat’s a mess.”

S13: There’s a really nice mixture of songs here, to the point where it’s actually a good starting point for those not familiar with Sweet Williams. Is that something you’ve thought about?

TH: “It wasn’t planned that way but I like that you say that. I definitely took the opportunity to do some different stuff… there’s stuff on there that’s different for SW, either more pop or more weird, and I think it somehow hangs together quite nicely. I always liked those more patchwork type records where one track sounds different to the next, like Movietone’s first LP or Vampire on Titus by Guided By Voices. And then yeah there’s a few more typically Williams tunes in there. But it wasn’t really planned as much as. Well… when you’ve got an idea or a brief and you get into it, it starts to dictate itself to you. You’re just working on it every day and making decisions one at a time and the thing ends up being whatever it is when it tells you it’s done.”

S13: Carl Jehle co-produced and mixed the album with you. Firstly, how did the collaboration with him come about; and secondly, do you think having someone co-produce your work helps enhance the songs?

TH: “Carl lives just across the street from me and we’ve been mates for a couple of years. We were hanging out a lot around the time I started mixing the Joy Dimmers LP and ’cos he makes cool tunes and has a good ear for detail. I’d play him mixes for a bit of perspective, and the observations and suggestions he made were always spot on, even when I was skeptical we’d give it a shot and it would totally work. So in the end he came fully on board for that one and we finished it off together, so when it came to pulling this record together I was highly relieved when he said he’d come in on it. He’d come in for a few hours a day and sculpt whatever I’d thrown at the wall into shape. There are quite a few bits there that are all him, and some where it’s him just telling me exactly what to do and how. He got the thing over the line, and he made it cool and fun when I really needed to be cool and have fun.”

S13: There are some amusing song titles, too. How important is it for you to show a sense of humour in your music?

TH: “Yeah, I like to think I’m funny.”

S13: The artwork is probably the darkest Sweet Williams has produced. Was it done before the album was finished?

TH: “The collages are things I did around the time we were putting the music together. Chris and I batted it back and forth. The images are relevant to the songs, in my mind, and Chris put it all together in a way that makes sense and is cool to look at. I hope anyone who gets the physical object enjoys it, down to the texture of the paper, whether that’s with the tunes or separate from them. Once it’s in your hands and in your house, it’s yours to do with as you please.”

S13: Was there any particular reason that you decided to stop playing live and do you think it’s something you’ll do again in the future?

TH: “Yeah, I or we will definitely play live again… there are plans in the works to do it. I had to cut a couple of things off quite abruptly, bands I was playing in, and I’ve been working through it and realised recently [that] I can’t tell the difference between anticipation and terror. For me they manifest the same way – like a physical discomfort that starts in the shoulders and numbs the legs and ends up as a knot in the stomach, where you can at least pour beer on it. It’s very similar to when you have a crush on someone. And even if it’s a horrible gig, you come away from it with all this unspent energy [and] you don’t know where to put it. If you could teleport yourself home, you would, where at least you can work on tunes, or cook for the freezer, or watch Severance breakdowns on YouTube until you fall asleep.”

S13: Due to the album’s length and how people’s attention spans are so short these days, do you see Four Five as a reaction to that?

TH: “Not at all. You should listen to music however you see fit, whether that’s a whole LP or your favourite tunes from all over on shuffle. There’s etiquette in company of course, like don’t just play a tune up to the first chorus then abruptly skip. And never put yourself in the middle of the backseat of a car full of actors singing along to You Can Feel It All Over because there’s nothing sadder than desperate actors pretending to feel it all over.

“I always liked mixtapes – actual mixtapes – when I was a kid. I had one called Tommy’s Choice which my dad and I spent a whole Saturday making off his LPs. The last tune on it was Farewell, My Fairweather Friend by PiL and the tape ran out just as Johnny goes, “Used to be nice”, which for years I thought was the actual end of the song. We played that tape in the car until it snapped. BASF c90, not very durable.”

Four Five is out April 4 via Wrong Speed Records. Pre-order from Bandcamp.