Jon Gomm: ‘I’ve had to accept that I was allowed to be a songwriter’

His first release with the label K-Scope, it also shifts the focus more towards Gomm’s songwriting rather than his technical prowess.

The album was written and recorded at home before Britain’s first Covid lockdown in March; it was produced and mixed in Australia by Andy Sorenson. “At that time he was living in a place called Ikuntji in Central Australia, it’s an Aboriginal settlement in the desert, completely isolated,” says Gomm. “He and his wife were charged with setting up some music and photography facilities there.”

Gomm and Sorenson had first connected when the video for the guitarist’s song Passionflower went viral in 2012. “Andy plays keyboards and he has a solo show where does looping and makes lots of sounds on his own and somebody sent (the video) to him and said, ‘This guy is like you with guitar, he’d doing everything’. Anyway Andy loved it and he felt a kinship by watching me on the video. At that point they were living in the Bush and his wife came back to the house and said, ‘You have to come and see this’ and took him out into the forest to see this flower that she’d found, which turned out to be a passionflower. That made them get in touch with me and I ended up doing a tour with them later that year, so I’ve known them since then.”

The pair worked on the album’s first song, Deep Sea Fishes, together in Yorkshire last year. “By doing that it gave us an idea of what was needed for the rest of it,” explains Gomm. “The idea is you get that kind of intimate connection from listening to one person play but then Andy has added effects and synths, so the sound of it is not so limited to my kind of finger-style percussive guitar and vocal. He can add these ethereal, otherworldly sounds to it.

“To me it’s style a solo album but instead of me just playing in a room and you’re in the room with me, I’m in some virtual reality crystal chamber that has impossible echoes and impossible reverb in there.”

Tracks such as Deep Sea Fishes and Cocoon reveal a change in approach from Gomm’s previous work. “It’s not really in the way I’m writing, it’s more in the stuff that I’m writing about,” he says. “I was always known as ‘The Amazing Jon Gomm’, which made me sound like I was going to have a top hat and a big moustache, but it was the crazy guitar stuff. I’ve always thought that was my thing, that’s what people expected from me, and things have changed since then. I’ve started getting messages over the past years where people aren’t talking to me about guitar-playing, asking me how I do this or that, they’re saying what the song means to them and how it’s helped them through some difficult time, or they’ve had the lyrics tattooed on their arms. I’ve had to accept that I was allowed to be a songwriter and that’s OK. I never thought I was good enough to call myself a songwriter, I’ve always been much happier calling myself a virtuoso guitarist. I’ve had to accept that I’m allowed to write songs that have songwriting as the main purpose and I’m allowed to connect with people emotionally.”

The Faintest idea is out now. Jon Gomm plays at Brudenell Sociall Club, Leeds on December 5, 2021. jongomm.com