Pictish Trail on his new album: 'I was going through a bit of a slimy time'
Softly psychedelic Scottish folk master Johnny Lynch, aka Pictish Trail, returns after three years with his new album, a UK tour and some sticky new approaches to audience participation, as Gary Sullivan discovers
The new Pictish Trail record has followed a deliberately unorthodox release strategy. A ‘fans first’ vinyl edition of Life Slime has been available since last October, with monthly singles landing on streaming services in the lead-up. The full digital release, alongside another special-edition vinyl, now completes the rollout. It’s part of an attempt to ‘gamify the way people interact with streaming channels,’ explains main man Johnny Lynch, ‘feeding that algorithm to some extent and rewarding those who wanted to purchase the album in full up front.’ It’s a canny marketing move in a landscape that has largely drifted away from consuming albums in one sitting.
This latest offering by the Lost Map Records figurehead emerged from a sustained ASMR video obsession, as he tried to make sense of seismic changes in his personal life. ‘I was going through a bit of a slimy time,’ explains Lynch, ‘so slime became something that I wanted to use as a visual metaphor for what was going on. But it was also something that’s just daft and fun and colourful; a bit weird and oddly cathartic.’ Those initial instincts clung on until they began to make artistic sense, with Lynch admitting: ‘It kept running through a few of the songs until I was like, I can’t really resist this anymore.’
The idea that songs and feelings could be pulled, stretched and remodelled was a recurring theme throughout the songwriting and recording process. Lynch notes that, after a tumultuous emotional period, using vocal effects on songs such as ‘Hold It’ was a way to ‘sing quite honestly about things’. The result allows his most direct and self-confronting lyrics to be woven among an ever-shifting stew of melody and sonic effects, yet the bare sentiment remains opaquely visible. ‘I feel like it’s a very melodic record and a pop record in a lot of ways, despite its subject matter.’
For his upcoming tour, Pictish Trail will swell to a full six-piece line-up, bringing depth to the new tunes and a hope that tracks such as ‘Another Way’, which he calls ‘an eight-minute crowd workout in the middle of the album’, will reshape and transform in a live setting. The commitment to Life Slime’s gungy genesis will also be fully realised, with Lynch promising his audience a uniquely bizarre form of live interaction. ‘I’m definitely trying to push things into a weird performance area. I go into the crowd and I’m pulling bits out from me like they’re vital organs.’
If this sounds dangerously close to Spinal Tap territory, he is already acutely aware of any potential pitfalls his slippery stage gear might cause. ‘I found that if I was squelching it and then I was going to play guitar, my hands would be totally slimy and it’d be really hard to do a barre chord.’ Spoken like a man comfortable with life’s new goo.
Life Slime is released by Fire Records/Lost Map on Friday 10 April; Pictish Trail are touring the UK until Saturday 29 August; main picture: Stephanie Gibson.