Me, Charles shares new 'Waiting' video for EP 'What Never Happened' out today! EP launch show announced
Me, Charles releases new EP Fine Isn't Good via Spinny Nights
Today he shares new live 'Waiting' video
Listen / share: https://youtu.be/xjVwTbPWmPE
Join the EP launch show at St Mary Le Strand Church on May 19th
Fine Isn't Good EP artwork
"Zaniness is celebrated, vulnerability is shaded in multicolour, and everything comes with a wink" The Line of Best Fit
Me, Charles has constructed a hauntingly beautiful piece of music, melding classic songwriting and modern production into a track that attracts something new with each listen. Wax
"Charles penning the most beautiful ballad about baldness that you are going to hear this week. Bristol label Spinny Nights rarely back duds and it looks like they’re onto another winner here." Riot
Also supported by: Bandcamp, Loud & Quiet, So Young, Jamz Supernova, BBC R 6 Music
Listen / share 'Waiting' (Live):
https://youtu.be/xjVwTbPWmPE
Stream EP:
https://bfan.link/fine-isn-t-good
Order EP:
https://mecharles.bandcamp.com/album/fine-isnt-good
Today Me, Charles shares new EP Fine Isn’t Good via Bristol based label Spinny Nights. The new EP is a groundbreaking and experimental fusion of warped jazz, glitchy electronics and chamber instrumentation, that directly deals with themes central to Charles’ life. The project as a whole is pitched as a heightened and feverish art piece, which draws on Charles’ experiences of loss, disordered eating and struggles with addiction, through a sardonic and surrealist lens in which Me, Charles comes across, in his own words, as “a bit of an idiot”.
To celebrate the release, there will be a Fine Isn't Good EP launch show taking place on May 19th at St Mary Le Strand Church, with support from SPOOZIC. Tickets available HERE.
To mark the release today, Me, Charles shares a live video of sombre track 'Waiting' recorded at Snorkel Studios, the same place where the EP was created. 'Waiting' laments for a past life, or one Charles is yet to live, in which a maternal cum romantic figure will magically ‘fix everything’. “I’m very aware of the fallacy of the idea that anyone other than yourself can sort out your own life, or one’s own life, although I used to subscribe to that way of thinking. I’m not a victim, but I do struggle with forming healthy romantic relationships'' says Stooke. He explains that confronting such issues through his music, in a lighthearted and self effacing way, can be very cathartic. “It was one of the first tracks I knew I wanted to go on the EP, and really felt like the beginning of a new period for me in terms of songwriting. It feels great to finally have it out in the world!” adds Charles.
Me, Charle's new EP Fine Isn't Good follows the protagonist on his narcissistic quest and ultimate goal to become ridiculously famous. “Narcissism is a big theme in my work. Me, Charles as a character desperately wants to be famous, and a part of me does too, but it's playing with that part of me and poking fun at it” says Charles.
Charles, from South East London, has been resolute in his decision to be a musician since childhood, and around the time of his mother’s passing, when he was just sixteen, he began making work that would later form the basis of Me, Charles. Stooke spent much of his formative years listening to and making electronic music, but ultimately found freedom of expression, and resultant catharsis, through more traditional songwriting. Over the years, Me, Charles has gigged and collaborated with the likes of acts such as KEG, feeo, Nukuluk, otta, Teeth Machine and many others, as well as releasing music independently and on labels such as Slow Dance Records and Spinny Nights.
In 2020, at the age of 24 and in his first year of recovery from active addiction, Stooke self-released his debut album Like and Share. The music on that album is extremely personal and emotionally charged, written between the ages of seventeen and twenty-one. “During that period I wasn’t at all able to connect with or process the loss of my mother, and instead actively avoided the fact through substance abuse and any other means possible. In that way, the music I was writing at the time was the only lucid expression I could make of those feelings. I didn’t want to bin that music because of this - it felt important to release it”. Despite the importance of these songs, the album was not representative of what the Me, Charles project would become. “On my first record I slightly shoehorned myself into a musical identity that I don't think represents me, so this EP feels to me like a declaration of intent - this is what my music sounds like” adds Charles.
Fine Isn’t Good incorporates grand orchestral arrangements, sophisticated production and clever lyricism to resoundingly demonstrate Stooke’s musical chops. Having been known to make audiences cry at his live shows, he ever carefully treads the line between creating work that is sonically awesome whilst still vulnerable and ‘human’.
The EP opens with ‘Fine Isn’t Good (Wet)’, a track of cinematic scale which is also reprised at the end of the record. “I wanted to open the EP with something that couldn’t be ignored”, explains Charles. This idea to posit a statement piece as the opener to the record is born out of Stooke’s desire to be noticed and ultimately validated by his contemporaries and a wider audience. “Everything about this record is meant to be attention grabbing; the scale of the arrangements, the sound design, even the artwork. I’m basically saying ‘Look at me! Look what I can do!’, which is stupid and quite petty but I think the consequent work is good”. On the soft, yet glitched out lullaby ‘White Pearl’, the listener hears Charles battling with his insecurities further, as he pleads with his balding head. ‘Oh White Pearl. Won’t you rest a little while more?’.
Body image is a recurring theme across the record. The EP’s title refers to the way we generally accept the word ‘fine’ as a replacement for good, when often that is far from the case. It’s also a reference to the overly high expectations Stooke puts on himself, in part due to the body dysmorphia and resultant disordered eating he has struggled with for many years. The EP’s artwork is a truly defiant image, where Stooke’s naked form is displayed unflinchingly on the cover. “I’m really lucky and grateful to be able to reappropriate these usually painful areas of my life in such a constructive way”, he says of the experience.
‘What Never Happened’ sees Charles play the hopeless romantic, imagining a lifelong relationship with someone he’s just met, ‘I know for sure, I’ll not forget, what never happened between us’ he sings.
Although Fine Isn’t Good explores Stooke’s trauma and troubled mental health, the record still feels buoyant and optimistic. Stooke’s playful caricature - and the music underpinning it - is an involuntary product of his ever-developing relationship with himself. Fine Isn’t Good is a master stroke in harnessing stark self-awareness to create something beautiful.
