Michael Llewellyn on ‘Oh My Darling’
Words by Hannah Powell. Images by Tim Cotton, Jake Munro, and Isabella Smith.
Meet indie artist Michael Llewellyn. His latest album, named Oh My Darling, is his musical debut and full of tunes that soothe and kick. From his home in Pōneke Wellington, Michael sat down with Yo Vocal to talk about song-writing, his first body of work, and how he got into music.
After congratulating him on his release, Michael says, “thank you; it is a nice feeling. I’ve never released something like that”. Pausing in thought, he continues.
“It’s nice to let go of something you’ve been working on for a while”.
Michael never used to be a musician. He had his hands full with surfing, snowboarding, and doing a whole lot of sport, and he says he was never hugely creative during his teenage years. He also credits his move to Dunedin to study as a reason for neglecting his creativity “I don’t know, I was a bit of an idiot,” he says. “That culture and that lifestyle there is so fun, so indulgent”.
This was perhaps a catalyst for unleashing his potential also.
After his fourth year of university, Michael developed a lot of back pain from his snowboarding days. Resulting in, by year’s end, his back and neck had seized up, and he couldn’t lift his arms above his head. “I wasn’t doing many wholesome things for my body, just smoking and drinking,” he smiles. “I was painted so far into the corner, and I was like, I think I need to turn the mirror on myself”.
After planting the seed, out of that space grew a different way of living.
He moved to Taranaki for two years and lived a quiet life. He started to write poetry and stories, where music naturally came next. It was bound to happen – Michael had been playing the guitar for most of his life and seeing friends in Dunedin releasing music inspired him to do it himself.
Four or five years ago, when he was twenty-three, Michael decided he would make an album. Seeing his friend Semisi from Marlins Dreaming, the Soaked Oats boys, and Nick Davies from Nicholas Franchise making music was a final push of encouragement.
“Seeing these people create a body of work…I just really wanted to do that,” Michael says. “I thought it would take me six months, but then it just grew, and I didn’t know how deep this wormhole was that I had gotten myself into”.
With influences from J.J. Cale, The Velvet Underground, Nina Simone, and Leonard Cohen, Michael’s debut album ‘Oh, My Darling’ is mellow, groovy, honest, and raw. It tells the tale of a young love story and Michael says it is deeply entwined with one particular relationship he had a few years ago. He wrote the songs while in that space and has spent the last couple of years figuring out how to record them and getting the right people together for the process.
I ask him whether revisiting old songs trigger old feelings, but he says it’s actually never crossed his mind. Although recordings draw him back to that place in time, he says love songs ignite other people’s longing for someone else; it’s a universal feeling. His songs are an offering for others to feel.
With a band of six behind him, he plays live as Michael Llewellyn and The Darlings. Drawn to playing little theatres and intimate spaces, Michael and his band played a sit-down recently at Meow.
“I love intertwining a bit of short film and poetry,” he says. “We try and make it a theatrical performance.”
Michael mentions he’s currently working on a second album with his live band. He doesn’t give me much more than that, but he excitedly talks about an upcoming project with his friend Jake. Inspired by an unreleased track, ’ Kauri Tree’, Michael and Jake are planning on a mission through Northland to Warkworth, two towns where they both have roots. Alongside the album, there are plans to make a short film based on a kauri tree two minutes’ walk from Michael’s family home.
On the topic of home, I ask Michael why he chose ’to describe his new album as a letter home. He says it’s because he poured so much into it. Also, the cover art resembles a neat little stamp; Michael says it looked like a letter after a while.
If you missed his latest gigs, he has a few North island locations coming up, and there is plenty more in-store. Yet to be announced are the band's summer festival dates and stops.