head/ But you’re burning in mine’, are not anchored in an easily deciphered scenario. Here’s Johnny Who is the Lady, and what does it mean for her to have ‘risen’? Flynn emerged from the same west Lon- James Mumford talks to the sickeningly talented don group of musicians as Noah and the actor and folk singer Johnny Flynn Whale, Laura Marling and Mumford & Sons; why does he think they caught the public imagination? ‘There are two things to talk ‘I am walking in some mountains’. That’s he was the first in his family to go to a pub- about there. The community and ethos and the out-of-office that pops up when I email lic school. ‘My dad was working class,’ he spirit. And then the actual sound of music Johnny Flynn to request an interview. The boasts. ‘The manner and culture of the world made on acoustic instruments. I wanted to folk star and West End actor is on holiday. in which I found myself was foreign.’ make music on those instruments because But he’s not doing the Three Peaks Chal- But Eliot’s influence isn’t limited to allu- what I found in electronic music lacked lenge. No, he’s tracing St Paul’s third mis- sions alone (‘We share the experience of authenticity. I couldn’t feel any heart in it.’ sionary journey across southern Turkey, a being alive/ And then we took some tea’ à la Flynn is quick to say that his taste is now 30th birthday present from Bea, his wife Prufrock). It runs deeper. ‘The progress of broader, but there’s still something essential and teenage sweetheart. ‘I’m obsessed with an artist,’ pronounced Eliot, ‘is a continual for him about the physical phenomenon of pilgrimages,’ Flynn says. He’s also done the self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of per- sound created on instruments. Way of St James, which finishes in Santiago sonality.’ It’s this famously impersonal style That’s instruments, plural. Because the de Compostela. ‘I love following old routes, Flynn aspires to. ‘I’m not really interested eclecticism of Country Mile — ‘Einstein’s imagining the consciousness of those who in myself in my writing,’ he says. ‘I can’t see idea’ is a lullaby, ‘Foi-de-Rol’ pure samba — walked them.’ stems from Flynn’s virtuosity. ‘You hear When he’s come down from the a different melody if you play an idea mountains we sit down to talk about on a banjo. Play it honkily on a piano the recent release of his third album, and it pushes you in a different direc- Country Mile. Sporting a solid tan and tion again.’ raggedy beard, Flynn still appears hor- And then there are the waltzes: one ribly handsome. And he’s sickening- on Country Mile, another on Flynn’s ly talented. The Lamda luvvie plays previous album, Been Listening (2010); banjo, guitar, trumpet and violin. all of a sudden old-fashioned seems But Country Mile is not your typical remarkably fresh. If you’re a crier, you slick studio production. It was written probably won’t get all the way through in snatches, during breaks taken from Been Listening’s ‘The Water’ — a duet the intense acting schedule Flynn has sung with Laura Marling. Letting Mar- worked to over the past three years. ling have the melody, Flynn sings the He played alongside Mark Rylance harmony. The two voices interweave in Jerusalem (‘thrilling to be on stage beautifully. ‘It was about trying to with, you don’t know what the fuck get the male and female voices like he’s going to do’), and the two teamed river currents, swirling around each up again last year for a double bill of other, tracing each other, overlap- Richard III and Twelfth Night. Trans- ping.’ While the equivalent track on ferring from the Globe to Shaftes- Country Mile, ‘Murmuration’, is unre- bury Avenue, the all-male production servedly romantic: ‘When everyone is of Twelfth Night, quite the funniest talking at the very same time, I’ll still Shakespeare I’ve seen, saw Flynn cast hear your voice, my dear.’ as Viola, pulling off the considerable Considering how multitalented he feat of being a man pretending to be a is, Flynn could be forgiven for having woman pretending to be a man. a bit of a swagger. But there’s no trace Flynn’s new musical offering is of that. Instead, he’s realistic. In terms clearly the work of someone steeped of festival crowds, ‘my sound doesn’t in Shakespeare. Melancholy is ‘yel- adapt to that size’. He’s modest. Sit- low’, hearts are ‘stout’, ‘the colours of coms are a stretch because ‘I’m not a autumn’ are ‘burnished with gold’ and funny person’. And his vacant stare is (dead giveaway) ‘Mab is my queen’. myself in the songs even though I know dif- not cold, just reassuringly ethereal. The great Bard is not the only reference ferent parts of me are there.’ We finish with the future. He wants to point for this literary songwriter. Country This can make his music harder to continue acting. Having just completed Mile’s second track is titled ‘After Eliot’. engage with. Not for him clear choruses filming an indie movie with Anne Hatha- ‘The bathos — putting the banal alongside with identifiable emotions. Not for him the way, Flynn feels that only now is he begin- the grandiose; the constant sense of mystery plaintive complaint: ‘I can’t live with or with- ning to be considered for parts he dreamt in everything; his powers of observation’ — out you.’ of in drama school. More generally, as the these are just some of the features of T.S. Take ‘The Lady Is Risen’, the centrepiece album attests, he’s preoccupied with ageing. Eliot’s poetry that resonate. So too does the of Country Mile. Emotion is unquestionably That comes, he divulges, from ruminating vigilant viewpoint afforded by the experi- present, as Flynn — over pounding organs on his father Eric’s death and son Gabriel’s ence of exile (Eliot was originally Ameri- and his trademark single-note trumpet solos birth, as well as his fascination with spiritu- can.) Flynn was born in South Africa, but — strains up the octave. But from the lyr- ality both Buddhist and Christian. ‘I always his family left when he was three. Securing ics it’s not clear what that emotion is. Trac- looked forward to being older and being a music scholarship to Winchester College, es of unreciprocated love, ‘I’m cold in your able to better inhabit my thoughts.’

the spectator | 16 november 2013 | www.spectator.co.uk 63

Arts_16 Nov 2013_The Spectator_ 63 12/11/13 15:53:35