Q&A: With Manchester Inspiration and An Attention to Detail, Nile Marr Talks Growth, Inspiration & More
LIKE FALLING INTO A RABBIT HOLE INTO ANOTHER WORLD — Nile Marr's music is a discovery of its own. The Manchester-based musician — previously part of the three-piece rock band Man Made — seems to have mastered the art of mixing poignantly poetic lyrics with a layered, rich production. The result is a sound that is warm and nostalgic, yet distinctive at the same time.
Marr's music is ultimately characterized by the singer's eagerness to grow and explore as an artist. The musician has worked extensively with composer Hans Zimmer on film scores, released album TV Broke My Brain (2016) with band Man Made, and released his solo album, Are You Happy Now?, last year. In 2019, he also founded his own label: Oldham Street Records. Through it all, he hopes to not only emotionally resonate with listeners, but also showcase natural artistic development to those invested in his projects.
With new work to be released, an upcoming collaborative project, a band, and a tour with Hans Zimmer, Nile Marr's schedule is packed for almost another year. However, it is this fast pace that inspires the singer to create more — and this creative process that he loves to explore and discuss.
Read below to learn more about Marr's inspirations, relationship with Manchester, and future intentions.
LUNA: How has your creative process and sound evolved over the years?
MARR: I'm still trying to make the music that I wanted to make in my head when I first started really engaging with music emotionally, as a kind of adult. I think 14 is the prime age — when a few songs come into your life, and you realize that's the kind of music you really, really like. Maybe some stuff will later fall by the wayside, and your tastes will change a little, but at a core level, there's certain songs and bands that have still stuck with me since then. For example, I am always trying to rewrite that Broken Social Scene song “Lover's Spit” or “Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl.” Those are songs I heard when I was about 13, and they went in so deep somewhere that every song I try to make, there's a part of me that just wants to try and write that. And because I always get it wrong, I'm always trying to do it again. I think as an artist, you trick yourself into thinking that you're doing something different, but you're not really doing anything different.
LUNA: What do you think makes a musician stand out?
MARR: I used to know a guy who'd play shows and if people weren't paying attention to him, he'd light his trousers on fire. That's one way to get people to pay attention. But more seriously, what resonates with me if I see a band live is when people are serious. When you're being authentic to yourself and are clearly serious about what you do — even if you're not very successful or not the finished version of yourself musically — that's what makes you stand out.
LUNA: In a lot of interviews, you've mentioned moving back home to Manchester. What does the city mean to you in terms of inspiration, and why do you keep coming back?
MARR: When I was a kid, I hated Manchester. The place felt very, very small, and it didn't feel very inspiring. It was in a bit of a post-’90s hangover, musically. We had an Oasis kind of scene — every local band seemed to be doing a bad Oasis impression. There was also an overt willingness to be actively uninspired and uninspiring, which I don't think was necessarily the point that Oasis were trying to get to. It was frustrating to grow up here and feel like all the bands I liked — that were doing the things I'd like to do — were North American. Then, we moved to Oregon, and that was amazing, because as a teenager, I was suddenly around all my favorite bands. It was like getting a musical education where I jumped several rungs on a ladder without having to do any of the foundation work.
Suddenly, I was listening to bands like Built to Spill and Unwound. I got very into American guitar music. I came back and forth between America and Britain, but I didn't feel connected to Manchester in any way. When I toured with Hans Zimmer for the first time, I was away for 10 months and saw so much of the world I'd never seen before. And everywhere I'd go, every music fan knew Manchester, and had this romanticized view of it. I then started to miss what Manchester was to me, which is this very musically educated hip town. It's small enough that you can still have quirky ideas — it's changing now, but it still feels like a community. It's not great or perfect, but I kind of felt like I remembered when it was even dirtier, and I remembered the dirt, and I needed to be here to tell people that there was dirt. So, for the first time in my life, I didn't have to be here. I'd made the choice to come here. When you've made that conscious decision, you know you're not actually stuck. It was like the whole city opened up for me to see from a fresh perspective. There's great things happening here now, but it's nice to feel like you're a bridge between two eras of a city.
LUNA: What is something that you turn to for inspiration?
MARR: I get inspired a lot by friends who I don't necessarily see often. Because of touring, I've got to live in a few different places, and have a group of friends who are all over the world. I see what they're doing, and I always think, “Wow, I want to do that.” And then I realize I could just do that. So, I try and do these things that I've picked up and do a bad version of it. Travelling is a big inspiration. It's like you've taken your brain out; given it a full wash. You've cleared away all the gunk that was filling it up, and when you come back, you've got room for new things. My brain definitely has a maximum capacity, and I need to be able to shelve what isn't important. This is why it's been so difficult for me, personally, to feel creative as the pandemic has stretched on this far. In the early days, the headspace you were allowed to get into was nice and introspective — but as things have gone, when you're stuck on a small island, your imagination starts feeling weighed down. It's difficult, but no one should feel pressured to make work. If you told me that you weren't able to do a single creative thing during the pandemic, but you were able to get through each day, that would be enough.
LUNA: You've worked with quite a few groups, and are making your own solo music. What is the difference between these processes?
MARR: When I was in my band, Man Made, I wrote all the music and then we played it. We were very much still a band, but I wrote everything anyway. Moving to going under my own name, I further embraced the fact that I was writing everything anyway. They felt more like just my records. This recent record that we finished during the lockdown — it was very natural to go into our new studio every day, and write the music I want to make. It was liberating — I felt relieved of outside pressure, and could make something just for myself. When I've done film scores, though, that's a very collaborative process. After doing collaborative work in that environment, I realized that no one actually knows what they're doing. No one has a right answer. There's just someone's opinion that you might want to listen to. When you're working on your own, you can just decide something is good enough, and it's done. Sometimes, that's not a good thing; but sometimes, you really need someone to tell you something's not done. When you work with others, you're constantly sharing ideas and bouncing off them, and some people are taking things you've done. Once you've put an idea there with other people, it's no longer yours. I like working with people — during the lockdown I was talking with Jade Imagine, who is an Australian band. I love her voice and I love what she does, so I sent my songs over, and she sang a bunch on what's going to be the new album. Every time we got something back from her, it was something we would've never thought of in a million years. I'm trying to get better at giving my work to someone and being okay with hearing it in a completely different way to what I expected. It's learning to kind of give up.
LUNA: Do you have a favorite and least favorite part of creating music?
MARR: There are things I hate — like mixing the drums — but that's more of a tedium thing. From a creative point, I sometimes put off writing lyrics. Say, I come up with a melody, and love the melody so much that I'm afraid to start writing words because I'm afraid it will mess up what I've just come up with. Down the line, after finishing the song, I listen back to the voice notes and little dictaphone recordings of when I was coming up with the song, before the words got put in. When I had this melody and this chord change that to me, at the time, was the most beautiful thing I'd ever done, and I was terrified I would ruin it. You listen back to that, and you think, “That’s nowhere near as good as when you finished it.” To me, the favorite bit of making music — and I could do this without anyone else in the world hearing it because it just makes me happy — is when you've written a song, you've just done a rough demo, and I sit at night and play it. I could play this on repeat for six, seven hours in bed, with the lights off.
My least favorite bit is when you feel you've got a song but you don't know how to get it out. It's quite frustrating knowing there's potential for that outcome. There's a period almost before the song has even started when you could lose it. You could not chase this moment of creativity, and I think that's a very scary point. It's my least favorite bit because if my phone rings or I get uncomfortable in my chair, I could lose all of that. That moment when there's the possibility of convincing yourself that it's not the right time — it's so easy to do that. That's my least favorite part.
LUNA: What do you hope your listeners take away from your work?
MARR: Live and the records are two different things. Live, we just want to be entertaining. I want people to feel like they are appreciated. I want them to feel like they got what they wanted — I'm not of the school of thought that you don't play your popular songs. Give people what they want — you're lucky enough to have people even interested. On a record, I want the audience to feel like they can understand the perspective of the person whose work they're invested in, even if it's just for 45 minutes. If there's some kind of emotional response — not necessarily to the words, but the sounds — and if you are interested in this person's artistic growth, that's a big thing. I would hate it if someone looks over a body of work that you've produced and there's no growth.
LUNA: I've been looking at your Instagram stories for a while, and they're very interesting. What is your relationship with social media like? How do you use it to connect with your audience?
MARR: I used to hate it for all the reasons you should hate it. And I respect people who don't participate in it, but I don't respect this view that you're above it. No one's above it. Once I kind of had that realization that this was a tool you need to connect with people and have a defined audience, things went a lot smoother. I was treating it as a job, and if I was doing that, I might as well find a way to enjoy it. I engaged in a way where I liked how certain people used their Instagram. I kind of collected all that, and tried to do it myself. The longer it went on, the more organic it became. It's a job, but it's not a job I resent. It's a nice way of sharing enough while still having my own time. And people seem to enjoy it. I think people respect when they're not being sold to.
LUNA: What are your intentions for the near future, in terms of both personal and professional life?
MARR: Since we built a studio and are now getting into the winter period, I'll end up starting to work more and be creative. It's one of the reasons Manchester's such a great place to be creative — because the weather for most of the year is terrible, you're inside, and you have to make do with that. By working inside, you're not missing out on anything. I have a studio now that — like all old buildings in the city — I'm waiting for it to be sold, knocked down, and turned into flats. That axe could fall at any moment, so if I can make as much music as possible before that, great.
In the immediate future, we have Dream English Kid, a Manchester band, who we're going to produce some songs for. There's a DIY Manchester cassette label who contacted me with a band they want to sign who need some studio time, so that's on the agenda, too. As I get older, I recognize that so much of how I was able to keep going was because I interacted with people who were older than me. They didn't necessarily give me resources, but they gave me their time. And that's really important — for someone else to go, “You should do this” — because all it takes to actually quit is enough thoughts of, “I should quit.” Then you've lost the potential of what that person could be. So when someone's serious about what they're doing, I always try to encourage that. I'm in a position where I've been doing it long enough and we've got a studio — which most people don't have — so I want to give people time. I don't need to be paid for it. Because then people can do it longer, and that's all I care about. I think I've also kind of started a band with my friend in America. It started with us wanting to do a fun cover of an Avril Lavigne song together, and then it got more serious. So I've got a few months to write songs with her and send them back and forth. The year after is hopefully for more touring and travelling. I think I might be playing the new Hans Zimmer tour that was postponed for two years. That'll probably take me till mid-summer next year. It's nice to keep busy.
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