The Fat Angel Sings

e4444e has just released his long-awaited debut album, “Coldstream Road” Written, performed and produced entirely by the 22-year-old Australian from Newcastle artist Romy Church, “Coldstream Road” is a stunning showcase of the artist’s refined grasp of melodic, affecting songwriting. The 48-minute sojourn that is Coldstream Road snakes its way through cyclic chord changes and bucolic melodies to invoke a world that is both elemental and full of curiosity. “It’s the sound of me relating to instruments, to melodies, to lyrics. It has a very natural, earthy, wet green feeling to me,” says Church.

With his electro-acoustic musings – influenced by Pavement, Buck Meek and Michael Hurley   and previously compared to the likes of (Sandy) Alex G and Animal Collective – e4444e creates a soundscape that is as celestial as it is grounded in the earth. On Coldstream Road, Church casts aside his samplers and drum machines in favour of acoustic instruments like guitar, piano and drum kits. As writer, performer and producer, opting for a simpler and more traditional approach provided him with an avenue to sound more exciting and unique than ever.

And yet Coldstream Road almost never came to fruition. After having finished most of the tracking and mixing, the hard-drive containing the album’s project files was left on the roof of Church’s car before driving into the night. Along with his phone and wallet, the hard-drive was found a few days later, smashed to pieces by the side of the road. Everything was lost save from the bare acoustic and vocal takes. Rather than wallowing in loss, Church was spurred into action and re-recorded the majority of the album at home in just four days. “I was working pretty much as soon as I got up till about six in the afternoon.”
Channelling Jack Kerouac, a-la his mythical three-week writing binge for On the Road, Church set to re-creating the album with a dogged determination and Zen-like calm. “It didn’t feel rushed, I just knew exactly what I wanted to do and did it. I think it kind of needed to happen. It made the album what I wanted it to be, just me letting the songs dress themselves.”

Coldstream Road, Romy’s debut album. Released in mid-June, it’s a spiralling fifty minutes of transcendent song-writing and forward-thinking creativeness; an adventure through highs and lows – mountains and valleys – that pluck the beauty out of avant-garde minimalism and amplify them ten-fold. It’s something accomplished to the degree you’d expect from someone like Nicholas Jaar – a mastermind of a more electronic-rooted sound – but e4444e, despite being a Newcastle-based musician only just releasing his debut album, is ready to give it a shot.

In many ways, Coldstream Road was a long time coming. It’s less the follow-up to his 2018 EP Mr Dover and The Endless Rovers– which almost feels like an album in itself – but an extension of it, taking the foundations of the past record and pushing it further. “I almost wish I made Mr Doverlonger and built it into an album,” Romy admits, spending 20 minutes on the phone after running off to a Newcastle record store to drop prints of the album, before returning to a nearby pub to soundcheck for a socially-distanced launch. “I had a lot of ideas and I knew what I needed to build the album in a sense, but didn’t do it until this time around.”

Such dedication to his craft has seen the young artist self-release 4 x EPs and a handful of well-received singles, cut his teeth supporting acts like Jens Lekman, GUM, Body Type and Hatchie and garner a loyal following.