SNQLX: What’s the earliest sound you remember loving?

Michael Wookey: My mother’s voice. She’d read me stories and I remember thinking her voice was a bit like warm porridge for my ears.

SNQLX: When did a song first feel like yours to make?

Michael: I started writing songs as soon as I started playing piano and guitar. Not good songs, but songs. I think I realised I was on to something when I dropped out of college and spent two years holding back a nervous breakdown in my parents’ garden shed, where I put my piano and recording equipment. That’s when it became an itch that I needed to scratch in order to not go crazy.

SNQLX: Where did this album get written, and what did that space sound like?

Michael: It was a very strange, uncertain period of my life. It was winter in Paris and I was mostly staying in a sweet little apartment behind the Hotel Amour. I worked at the living room table, which had a view of the hotel’s windows. The songs aren’t about what I saw, but it sure was interesting to play voyeur for a sec while I was writing. I recorded in that apartment, which had wooden floors. Some of the vocals I recorded on the bed. It sounded small.

SNQLX: What did you want this record to hold that your last ones didn’t?

Michael: I don’t really aim to do something new each time, just keep going. But this one, I think, is more spontaneous and quick than the ones before. I think repeating yourself is a bit inevitable after so long, as my friends can attest.

SNQLX: Which song on it surprised you most while you were making it?

Michael: “Missed You For A While.” I wrote it when I was about 18 and I took the vocal from the four-track recording and remade the music around it. It was like a musical equivalent of those AI-generated images of adults holding their childhood selves.

SNQLX: How do you decide when a song is finished?

Michael: It’s a feeling somewhere between giving up and running out of time. I don’t sweat it because I can play it live later and do it differently then.

SNQLX: What does a toy instrument give you that a “real” one can’t?

Michael: Street cred, at least at Gymboree, a kindergarten-like place where I take my kid. I like that they have character straight away. I spend far too much time putting pianos through tape echoes and weird effects, but often a Casio will sound used and lived-in straight away.

SNQLX: Some of your vocals are left raw and close. What are you listening for in a take?

Michael: I am trying to record a moment in time. I try to sing the songs as late in the process as possible and then just kind of feel it out. A lot of the songs were recorded with CB radio mics and I ended up doing them again with a normal mic just to bring it all closer to reality and feel less like a trucker calling in about an accident on the road.

SNQLX: What’s one sound on this album you’d want a stranger to notice?

Michael: I’m always happy to use the Optigan and when people recognise it. It reminds me of when I’d ride a motorbike and other riders would give me a little side-nod on the road, like “me too, brother, I ride a motorbike, let’s be buddies.” The Optigan is basically a sampler that reads film discs and sounds like an old Disney soundtrack. It’s incredibly inspiring.

SNQLX: What do you know about songwriting now that you wish you’d known at fifteen?

Michael: That no one is going to care about it as much as I do. It’s liberating to realise you can do whatever you want.

SNQLX: What does a good day of making music look like for you?

Michael: Mostly it’s a solitary process and I like it when I have something to share at the end of the day and it feels like I can plug myself back into the grid.

SNQLX: If someone presses play for the first time, where do you hope they’re sitting?

Michael: Anywhere they like, but not on my lap. I get the horrors when people play my music in front of me.

SNQLX: What’s next for you?

Michael: I recorded a bunch more songs already. Very acoustic, baby sock under the strings. Hopefully I’ll slide that across the table soon.