Stephen Fretwell by Holly Whitaker
Stephen Fretwell returned last month with Oval.
Stephen Fretwell has confirmed the details of his third album Busy Guy, out on July 16th.
Fretwell was with Speedy Wunderground and Dan Carey to craft a successor to 2007’s Man On The Roof – after so many years away, the long awaited LP is the result of a session lasting just two hours back in the summer of last year.
“I was so fired up, I just rattled off the songs,” Fretwell recalls. “I assumed it was the run-through, but Dan said he thought we’d got it.”
“Dan said, ‘I’m just going to react to the songs over the next few hours’, and that’s the finished record, besides some cello.”
“Years ago, Dan asked why I always carried a copy of The Guardian, a notebook and a pen when all I did was go to the pub. I said: ‘If you go to the pub at 11am with a newspaper, a notebook and pen, you look like a busy guy rather than a pisshead’.
“It became a joke between us. The joke too is that I didn’t do any music for years.”