Interview Bill Ryder-Jones on weighty new LP ‘Yawn’: “It’s a really good time for people to hear musicians being honest”

Well, the only frustrating thing about the best job in the world is when you start to think about your next move. Can I do the same thing again? Or how can I change it? But then after a few months I'll realise I'm not gonna be on the radio, and as soon as I forget about that stuff then something happens and I rediscover why it is that I like writing. The worst thing is when you know you're not writing well and it took me until the end of last year to really find anything that I wanted to say. I've always got shit loads of melodies, but they're not enough for people. They need words, and it took quite a while to get there.

I think lack of confidence is the main thing. To get a good song, your head has to believe you can do it. It's two extremes for me, I have to feel completely fucking useless and like I'm not gonna make another album and no-one's gonna give a shit so I'll just write for myself. Or I have to consider myself as someone worth hearing. It's one of those two modes that it falls into.

Working with Our Girl on their record was a big thing. I came back from that session really energised. They were so loving towards me and very supportive and constantly full of praise. I've never been around people that are so happy to tell you you're doing a good job. I came away from that going, well they're unashamedly doing their own thing and I shouldn't be so critical with myself.

I discovered a couple of groups that I love like Red House Painters and Low, music that has a feeling that's not quite like the romantic melancholy that people associate with me: it's an uglier, more sterile, colder version of angst. They make music in this strange, quite dramatic world that isn't full of pay-offs or resolve. I listened to a lot of that stuff and thought, that's the music I wanna make.

The hard thing is writing as well as that when you're dealing with something so personal. Anyone can write about sadness, but that doesn't necessarily make it interesting or artistically good; I quite quickly realised it's only gonna be good if I'm doing it for myself. Despite all the humble musician shit, it's a very self-centred act when you're doing it well. The picture of me that I have when I think I'm writing well is me in my boxer shorts at midnight in my bed with a guitar, just writing to fill some time or to get something off my mind. The pressure is always there but it only ever lasts until my fifth shit song and then I think oh, fuck everyone else.

I spend so much time on the melodies and so much time changing words to enable the melody to live properly. You have people like Alex Turner and Morrissey who are brilliant at the opposite, who've made their name lyrically and can do something that I can't get near which is to give you a melody and then mess about with it for the sake of lines that they know they need to have in there. It's such an amazing thing to listen to because I'm completely at the other end of the spectrum. The amount of clever lines I sit there writing in the bath and think, that's good shit, and then I have to get rid of them. 'There's Something On Your Mind' on this record – I hate that line, it's such a boring thing. “There's something on your mind... Oh is there, Bill? Won't you tell us about it again, you fucking moaner...” But it worked too well with the melody so I had to find a way of [making it interesting]. That song's about sex drive and how sometimes for me it's not there. You get a line like that and I'll sit down and think, well how do I make this interesting? I started to think about how people say of men, oh there's only one thing on his mind whereas in my life at the time I wasn't particularly sexually motivated.

It was a long winter. I was struggling with that and myself and I enjoyed the space; being able to have a lot of music with not too many words, not having to give choruses. I felt quite liberated [by it]. With 'West Kirby...' I'd wandered into quite a 'Northern lad with guitar' territory; I'd become very jangly and sing-along-y and I don't know how that happened. I wanted the space because when I'm singing I wanted it to be noticeable.

I'm always chipper! It throws people. I went to Paris to do some interviews not long ago and they were expecting me to be like Morrissey, but I've always had a sense of humour. It's my mother's doing. The world is quite funny and I read this Aldous Huxley book when I was younger that said the world is never just one thing. I had an interview the other day where I was talking about having my first panic attack and I thought it was an asthma attack so I was using this inhaler, pumping my body full of adrenaline which is the worst thing you can do, and I was kind of in tears but laughing about it. I'm fortunate to have a sense of humour because I can get wrapped up in sadness quite easily, but I've never not been able to laugh about it.

The record was made for people who have their own life and need to escape it a little bit. I don't make music because I'm a party animal and I don't like music that's put on at parties. The idea is just, you know, let me come in your ears... But why do I do it? I don't fucking know. I have very little else to do and it makes me very happy and it makes everything else bearable when I'm that happy. And as strange as it is, there are clearly some people out there who are interested in my take on the world and this is another slice of that pie.

'Yawn' is out now via Domino Records.

Tags: Bill Ryder-Jones, Features