Being Careful With Words

"When I was driving around in America with a friend recently,” Adelaide singer-songwriter Tom West recalls, “he had his old iPod and plugged it in and up came some of the real old shit, from when I was 17, and it’s cringeworthy stuff! So I guess it’s taken me a long time to write some stuff that is not terrible,” he chuckles.

It might have taken ten years to achieve the quality of the eight songs that make up his latest release, the Oncoming Clouds EP — which includes the single, The Call, that launched him properly last year, and latest single, Easy, Love — but for West, it was all part of the process, and one that began properly about five years ago with the so-low-key-most-people-missed-it release of an eponymous album.

“That’s when I became more succinct in my writing,” he explains, “more thoughtful and not just writing whatever popped into my head. I think that’s probably the best way of putting it. Around 22, 23 I became more careful with the use of words.

"I guess it’s taken me a long time to write some stuff that is not terrible."

“I did a lot of travelling in those years. I went away for seven months with an old girlfriend of mine, came back for a short while and then away again for a few months, with a different… girlfriend (another chuckle) and I suppose that kind of thing was a big inspiration. I was out of my comfort zone and had more to sit around and just ponder songs, and that led to being more thoughtful about the stuff I was writing. Some of my stuff is still a bit mushy, still a bit emo from time to time, but the old stuff was really like that.” 

The five years between that self-titled debut and Oncoming Clouds was filled with more travel and playing in a band, Traveller & Fortune, for whom he wrote the songs, including the one of which he’s most proud, Letter To Japan. Meanwhile, the next batch of songs was slowly evolving and West applied for every grant going. Within months of releasing The Call, he was performing showcases at CMJ in New York City, and West is only just back from taking part in Canadian Music Week and some more US gigs.

“I’ve realised this more and more recently, that I have a habit of making manic, spur of the moment decisions, and I think some of that overseas stuff was quite manic and perhaps not a trajectory that a wise person or wise band manager would do but, anyway, it is what it is. It’s been a lot of fun though and I don’t regret doing any of that stuff, and there’ll be new songs coming from all that I have no doubt when I eventually get back to the drawing board.

“It’s challenging enough playing in Sydney for an Adelaide boy, but then when you’re taking the next step over the Pacific Ocean it’s just something else again. But I’ve always found that, in challenging myself I always get the most inspiration I suppose in retrospect.”