Alex Gibson Dives Into The Struggles and Joys of Growing Up With ‘Thirty’

Australian raised and London based artist, Alex Gibson joins us to share all about his latest album release, ‘Thirty’.

Just under six years ago, Alex embarked on a journey from his home in Sydney to live a new musical chapter in London.. a place filled with many of his musical inspirations and heroes.

It wasn’t long before Alex Gibson was performing at many iconic venues in London and building a strong reputation. He won awards for his songwriting, including Time Out London’s rising star acts in 2016 and was runner up in the ‘Songs of War’ competition in 2018 which was judged by the likes of Joss Stone, Dave Stewart and Mike Rutherford and has performed from Portobello Road to Sofar Sounds.

After five years in the making and created over three countries, ‘Thirty’ is Alex Gibson’s sophomore album and features raw authenticity and fierce energy as he explores the experiences.. the highs and lows.. the suffering and joy that has made the man, Alex Gibson.

With the majority of the album produced by Simon Cohen (Vocal producer for ‘Love Yourself’ Justin Bieber) on the album, mixed and mastered by Brian Lucey and recorded live with a band at Studios 301 in Sydney, Alex brought together musicians that had been a part of his life or who he had respected and admired to perform with him on the tracks, some of which included James Englund and Ryan Miller (Angus & Julia Stone).

As you listen to the tracks on ‘Thirty’, you will be taken on an inspirational journey through the depths of a life filled with love, pain, struggles and joy.. a journey that we can all deeply relate to.

You can listen to ‘Thirty’ below:

Tell us a little about your background

I grew up in Canberra with a Swedish mum and an Aussie dad and I was lucky to have plenty of musical influences around from a very young age. My parents aren’t musical at all, but they somehow ended up with a singer-songwriter son, and my brother Johan became a hip-hop artist (Context is his artist name).

Having two distinct cultural influences from my parents definitely had a big impact on me. My mother is from a small town on the west coast of Sweden, so I spent many summers there as a kid.

I knew from a very young age – probably around the time I turned 7 – that I wanted to pursue a career in music. I started singing in a choir, and then when I was a teenager I started playing the guitar and writing songs. After high school I moved to Sydney to attend a music school.

I started my career in the most organic way possible. I went to music school, played open mics, I started putting on my own shows at venues such as The Basement and Lizottes. I was opening for some big bands and I was performing at venues and busking all over Sydney and then Melbourne. Triple J played a track from my first album on ‘Roots N’all’ and it was doing quite well in the iTunes Charts. Then I made a decision to audition for ‘The Voice’ after Ronan Keating had seen me busking at ‘The Rocks Markets’ and had purchased my single and passed it on to the producers.

In 2013 I was a competitor on the show and I ended up number 3 in Seals team. I really enjoyed this time of my life and in the 12 months after the show I went on 2 national tours and basically went on a mission to share my music with anyone that would listen. Then in 2015, I really felt like I needed a change. I needed to go somewhere brand new and be completely fresh in a brand new scene. So many friends had told to move to London. Seal told me I should move to London and so did I my manager and my friends. So one day when I was driving down to Melbourne to do a gig with Woodlock, I randomly pulled over on the side of the road and booked a one way ticket to London for the 1st of June 2015.

London was a real highlight for me. I lived on a friends couch for the first month or so and straight out of the gates I started busking in the city, on Portobello Road, outside the ‘Tate Modern’ and at original venues all over town with some great acts. It was refreshing to be a nobody in a brand new city. Not that I was famous in Australia, but there was definitely a bit of a stigma about being on a reality show and in some ways it took away from me pushing my original music.

My first taste of the English music scene was playing alongside ‘Nathan Ball’ and ‘Demi Louise’ (Victoria based artist/ songwriter) and many other English artists at an event at the Sky bar/ Pop Up Hotel in Glastonbury in 2015. I played 10 sets over the festival. SIDENOTE: This event was the bar/ hotel that was just outside of the festival entry. So it was not a part of the official Glastonbury festival. 

My time in London was fruitful. My songwriting developed the most it ever had. I planned so many trips around Europe and for the first time in my life I found a good balance between work and play.  I had worked out that life was about working smarter and not necessarily harder, and that sitting in a coffee shop and writing lyrics, or exploring a new country or going out partying with mates was just as beneficial as all the grafting and gigs and business side of it all.

On that note, I met so many inspiring individuals. I used to play every Saturday on Portobello road and even the likes of Ed Sheeran, Natalie Imbruglia and Bruna Marquezine saw me play down there, which was very exciting for me. I had gigs at venues such as ‘Barfly’, Omeara, the 100 club, Kensington Rooftop Gardens and The Troubadour and also plenty of shows for SOFAR sounds in London and also in Sweden. There was such a good scene with so many up and coming artists all supporting each other. I also felt this when I was in Australia. With so many artists, particularly from Melbourne…. My close friends there were ‘Amistat’ and Woodlock and Rita Satch. And in Sydney it was always great to see artists such as Milan, Patrick James, Daniel March, Thandi Pheonix and so many others killing it.

What was it that first got you into music

When I was growing up we had a little holiday shack at Lake Eucumbene in the Snowy Mountains. There was no TV or video games there, so we had to entertain ourselves. Dad had a milk crate filled with old records and I used to obsessively listen to these classic albums, such as ‘Thriller’ by Michael Jackson, BeeGees, Abba and Paul McCartney along with some old French records and musical soundtracks.

My uncle also sent me some records from Sweden by The Cardigans and Roxette when I was younger. When we visited him in Sweden, his basement was filled from wall to wall with thousands of CD’s.  So his passion for music was quite infectious to me. My biggest musical influence came from my cousin Linnea one summer in Sweden, she had started playing the guitar and was very good. She started playing ‘Tears in Heaven’ by Eric Clapton. I was in awe of this song and admired her ability to play the guitar. The second I got back home to Australia I started playing the guitar and writing songs. My biggest influence in my early songwriting attempts were The Beatles, I basically listened to them exclusively for about 2 years.

Your journey has involved you making a big move from Sydney, Australia, to the UK.. what was it that led you to making that decision?

I felt by 2015 that I had kind of burnt out. I was still playing some great shows. Headlining my own gigs and supporting bands such as Woodlock, Amistat, Deni Hines, Uncle Jed, Diesel, Black Sorrows.. But I felt like if I didn’t move I would just go stale. There was some sort of vague remembrance of my face being on a TV show, and I knew I needed to walk my own road in a brand new city, where I could be a fresh face in the crowd.

So before that happened I bought a one way ticket to London. Seal had told me I should move to either LA or London, my manager was pushing me to move to London and one of my best friends thought I should move there so I can break out of work mode and also enjoy the rest of my 20’s. For all these reasons I pulled over on the side of the road on the way to Melbourne and bought a one way ticket. I hadn’t even saved any cash when I left. I just landed and slept on a friends couch for a few weeks until I got everything sorted.  I also wanted to write an album that would elevate my career.

You have released your new album, Thirty.. tell us about what inspired you to create this album.

My new album ‘Thirty’ is basically the album that tells the story of my ‘growing up’. It also gives an insight into the struggles and joys that so many people go through in their lives, especially in their formative years (20’s for me). This is anything from the thrill of meeting someone new and falling in love (Falling for You, Dance with You), or the darkness that we all feel sometimes (Dancing with the Devil), or even the pain of a miscarriage (Heartbeats), or exploring the world and trying to deepen yourself (Feel Something, Searching), through to unrequited love (Spirit Girl) and finally knowing what you really want (Thirty).

 There is one song that is a lone-wolf in the pack, that song is ‘Survivor’ and it’s on the record to promote tolerance and acceptance of refugees. This song wrote itself in about 5 minutes after I had seen the picture of the young boy ‘Alan Kurdi’ washed up on the beach on the front page of all the major newspapers. It was such a sad picture and it evoked so much pain and discussion.

My goal was to find the line between my artistic vision, and accessibility. I guess so many of my favourite artists make complex songs sound so simple. Like John Mayer, or McCartney… I wanted people to just ‘feel’ the songs without being distracted by too much going on. I think I’ll find that balance even more in my next album, but I am very happy with how ‘Thirty’ turned out.

There is so much depth of personal experience and emotion within your music.. what do these tracks mean to you?

These tracks are mainly autobiographical, so I would say aside from ‘Survivor’ I personally experienced all the emotions and topics. I would one day like to make up stories and write a concept album about them. As I mentioned above, there are some very deep topics on this record. ‘Heartbeats’ is probably the most painful of them all. It’s about the loss of an unborn child, and sadly I went through that with my ex girlfriend.

I know my music is heartfelt, but I would say my actual personality is to not talk about things so much. So I express everything through my music. Probably typical of many people, I’m just lucky I have a vent through my songwriting. On a positive note, my wife and I are now the proud parents of a baby boy named Arnold.

What is your creative process like, when you are creating your music?

My creative process usually starts with a riff or some chords on the guitar and then melodies for the different sections. I often have multiple ideas over a time period and they somehow fit together. So mould the basic structure of the song and I then sit down with a paper and pen and work out what the song is about. Usually while I’m writing the chords some random words pop out, so I kind of work with that and then think about what I want to say.

Generally I come up with the basis of the whole song very quickly and then I will sit there with a notebook and finish the lyrics over time. If I don’t do it straight away I end up with one of hundreds of unfinished ideas in my voice memos. I kind of need to be in a certain space to write.

There were a few songs I wrote while I was traveling. When I wrote ‘Dancing with the Devil’ and ‘Searching’ I was staying in a small beach shack on the coast in Sweden. This is probably my ideal writing situation. All I did was sit and write all day and then swim in the ocean, and run in the forest. Sounds very hipster.. but I guess this lifestyle is great for writing. Not always possible.

Your album was recorded across 3 countries and over 5 years.. How do you feel like the time and the location changes impacted the creation of your album?

In an ideal world I think working with one producer, in one studio in a one block of time would is ideal. But for me I had to take advantage of opportunities to record. I had one song recorded in Sweden, one in London, and then the rest in Sydney.. I also had some drums recorded remotely from Byron and strings recorded in the UK. It’s pretty amazing these days that so much can be done from home studios and the sound can be phenomenal.

It was hard to fit them all together. I recorded ‘Survivor’ in Sweden at Gula Studion after I had spent the day recording acoustic videos and I had half an hour left on the clock. I felt like it needed to be recorded in that moment as is was the perfect vibe in a world class studio. The glue that made all the tracks fit together was ‘Ryan Miller’, who mixed all the songs and produced the track ‘Thirty’. He was able to help make everything cohesive, this was a complicated process way beyond my level of skills.  The next album I am going to be recording with Ryan, and it will be one studio for the whole thing, with some over dubs maybe in other studios all over the world.

How has Covid-19 affected your releasing journey?

For my music career the Covid-19 pandemic was the equivalent to a large brick wall just suddenly sprouting up in front of me, it really did stop everything. The day before lockdown in London I was meeting with a friend of mine and discussing being given free recording time at a major label studio in London, and then of course within an instant every plan was put on hold.

I would say it was like this for everyone I know. London was a brutal place in 2020. I lived in a corner apartment close to the centre and all we heard for months and months was constant ambulances. I guess perspective was crucial at this time. I mean my wife and I had a random bout of coughing that lasted weeks in March 2020 and we had no idea what it was.. I guess it was probably Corona. But for the most of it we stayed very healthy and we were very lucky to have made it back to Australia in one piece.

In terms of releasing.. Luckily I had already recorded all of the songs. The only thing that changed was the lack of ‘live performance’ to promote my music. I released singles over 2020 and It was a great confidence boost to have so many of my tracks played on Nkechi Anele’s ‘Roots N all’ on triple J sand also have some really good support from platforms such as Alexrainbird music and Mahogany and many other blogs.

If all the stars aligned, where would you ultimately like to get to with your music?

If all the stars aligned I would be writing songs with big name artists and just spending all my days recording and playing amazing venues. I used to walk past the Basement when I was 19 hoping that I would one day play there. Then when I was in London I used walk past Royal Albert Hall all the time hoping that one day I would play there. So I’d say my big dream is to become a renowned songwriter and play shows at the Royal Albert Hall and maybe the Corner Hotel in Melbourne and the Enmore in Sydney.

At the end of the day I’m happy with a one hundred people in a room, all enjoying the music, and playing with a band of people I love. That sounds pretty damn good to me. If that’s the worst case, then I’m happy.

From your experience, what advice would you give to aspiring musicians?

I would say that finding your own identity and developing your skills are just so important. There are so many millions of artists out there so you have to some way stand out among the pack. This could be with a unique voice or great musical skills, or even through quirky production. Just do something to stand out.

I know that instagram and Ticktok are also important to get the message out there, but just make sure that if you share a 15 second video of a song, you know the rest of the song. It’s important to finish what you start. Also, make sure if you go on tour you also have some fun…

Where can people go to find your music?

My music is available via all major platforms. For example.. Spotify, Apple Music, & Bandcamp.

Here is the link: https://linktr.ee/alexgibsonmusic