Aqualung

"Music can be an amazingly potent thing," says Matt Hales, aka Aqualung. "When I sing into the microphone in the studio, I'm whispering my secrets in people's ears. When it connects, it can be so powerful. It's still a remarkable process to me."

Indeed, in a field crowded with empty shouting, Words and Music—the English singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist/producer's fourth album (and third U.S. release) under his longstanding nom de disc Aqualung—has the feeling of a series of deep emotional truths whispered in confidence. An effortlessly intimate set of subtly crafted, organically melodic tunes with openhearted lyrics and spare, mostly acoustic arrangements, Words and Music features some of Hales' most compelling work to date. Such subtly soulful tunes as "7 Keys," "Arrivals," "Good Goodnight" and "When I Finally Get My Own Place" balance adult emotional insight and childlike wonder, and are squarely in the tradition of such introspective pop auteurs as Brian Wilson and Paul Simon. Not coincidentally, Simon's '70s classic "Slip Sliding Away" receives a poignant interpretation from Hales on the album.

Words and Music—which Hales co-produced with his brother and musical right-hand man Ben, who also provides guitar, bass and harmony vocals, and co-wrote several songs—is the product of an extended period of soul-searching that caused the artist to seriously reexamine his career priorities, after a life that's been spent making music.

Hales began writing songs at the age of four and won a music scholarship at 16, and soon saw his classical symphony Life Cycle performed by a 60-piece orchestra. He later achieved a modicum of U.K. notoriety with a pair of British rock combos, Ruth and The 45's, but eventually grew weary of band life. Hales began recording as Aqualung in 2002, and achieved some unexpected early success when his demo of the song "Strange and Beautiful" appeared in a Volkswagen TV commercial and immediately struck a chord with listeners. That fluke occurrence turned Aqualung from a modest lo-fi bedroom recording project into a successful major-label act.

Hales' first two U.K. albums, Aqualung and Still Life were combined to create Aqualung's first U.S. release Strange and Beautiful, which became a substantial stateside hit. Meanwhile, Hales demonstrated the flexibility of his songcraft by presenting his music in a variety of live formats, from solo piano performances to gigs with a four-piece band to concerts with a 17-person ensemble. The conflicting emotions generated by Hales' unexpected mainstream success were reflected in 2007's Memory Man, a densely packed, largely electronic meditation on the disconnection and dislocation that Hales was feeling at the time. Those emotions left the lifelong musician and songwriter unsure of whether he wanted to continue as a recording artist.

"I'd been on the road for about three years, and I was as unwell and as unhappy as I've ever been," he recalls. "I thought, 'This is absolutely ridiculous, how can this be the result of success?' I felt like I was completely done, and like I had to stop. So I came home and hung out with my family and got busy producing and writing for other people, and had a think about what I might do next. But then I started to write some songs, and I eventually came back to realizing how much I would miss it if I gave it up. I realized that I just had to find a way to carry on, but on my own terms."

Eventually, Hales and his brother Ben began cutting unfussed, stripped-down recordings in Matt's home studio, with little thought of releasing them to the public. "It was really me and my brother sitting at home in London, just seeing what would happen if we tried out this sound or this tone. Initially, we were just playing around with new versions of old songs, but then I started writing new songs, and it grew and grew, and at some point it started feeling like a record.

London-based Matt Hales, aka Aqualung, started getting involved in music at a young age while listening to different tracks played at his parents' Southampton record store. He began writing songs at age four on his family's piano. At the age of 16, after achieving a scholarship, the enthusiastic young man began attending composition classes. A year later a symphony called Life Cycle became his debut in the classical field, performed by a 60-piece orchestra. His brother Ben joined him in a band to cover the Police's classic songs. In the early '90s, following studies at London's City University, he became part of the Britpop band Ruth, releasing Harrison on ARC Records in 1999. After leading the 45's (not the Atlanta-based garage rock revival band) and issuing two singles on Universal, Hales grew disenchanted and started working on Aqualung in 2002, often co-writing songs with his wife Kim Oliver and brother Ben Hales. The alternative rock project (initially just a lo-fi bedroom venture) became quickly popularized by a VW Beetle TV ad in the U.K. featuring his song "Strange and Beautiful (I'll Put a Spell on You)," which coincided with the release of his self-titled debut in 2002. Several singles followed into the next year, as well as his second album, the fuller-sounding Still Life. The record spawned another hit single in "Brighter Than Sunshine," and soon, various Aqualung tracks were popping up in popular television shows and movies on both sides of the Atlantic. Hales then combined tracks from his earlier U.K. albums into one 12-song set for Aqualung's proper American debut, which finally surfaced in early 2005 via Columbia Records entitled Brighter Than Sunshine. Extensive touring throughout North America followed over the next two years, driving the album to number one on Billboard's Heatseekers chart and going on to sell over 250,000 copies. On the road, since Hales was essentially just playing songs he'd written years earlier to a new audience, he would routinely switch up the Aqualung show with different musicians, settings, and approaches to keep things as fresh as possible. The diverse elements he explored during this time (including the echo device called the Memoryman) subsequently drove the creative process behind what would later become Aqualung's next album, March 2007's more ambitious Memory Man. In 2008 Aqualung released the intimate Words & Music, the band's Verve Forecast debut. ~ Drago Bonacich, All Music Guide