Charlton Hill Goes Down To The Waterline
(Undercover Media, April '03)

charlton hill is a 25 year old singer songwriter from sydney, australia. for the last 5 years he has also been a bit of a nomad, travelling the planet, observing the sites and documenting his travels in song.

the result is a a stunning debut 'waterline'.

charlton hill is not your new kid on the block. he is a seasoned performer who has carved his niche the old fashioned way … by paying his dues.

charlton hill is a refreshing new talent in a world filled with manufactured pop. his Waterline album will restore your faith in talent coming first.

undercover's paul cashmere spoke with charlton hill.

paul cashmere: waterline is finally out. congratulations. it sounds like a labour of love.

charlton hill: thankyou, yes it is. anybody who has been involved with me since the early days is saying "how does it feel to finally have it out". in a way it feels like a long time and in other ways there has been so much happening since i recorded the album that it feels like it is now ready.

pc: after you left school you travelled the world. do you now feel like the boy who has come home?

ch: yeah. i guess i do. i deliberately removed myself from a comfort zone in sydney and australia to see the world but also to instigate things that would generate material and give me things to talk about life. i wanted to work out who i was and travelling is a great way to do that. it is a bit like coming home to put out my stories and my tales that i wrote about during that time.

pc: did living overseas spark your lyrics?

ch: predominately. i had a lot of tracks that i chose the albums from. a couple of the tracks were from just before i left. i was feeling agitated and had to do something to shake things up for myself. the majority of them were written overseas and based on experiences. not so literally. sometimes it is just the way something affected me and i wrote about that.

pc: why did you end up in london?

ch: it was fairly fateful. i spent some time in france for a while. i had been to holland. i came back to london because i knew some people and it was always going to be a point of call. when i stopped there i fell in with a whole bunch of musicians around the camden scene and ended up living with a bunch of them. whenever i was writing it made demoing songs easier. it became a base to do more travel from. i did a job to earn some pounds and did some busking.

pc: you are the missing link in the music industry right now. you are that old beast the singer songwriter. it is rare these days.

ch: it has been kind of strange what has been happening in the music industry, especially in australia. i guess someone like alex lloyd has opened the door all over again. you wonder where it has gone. i think people were getting sick of things that are manufactured and watching pure pop star stuff. it was exciting for a while to see behind the scenes and where it has all come from but that the end of the day that isn't what music is all about. hopefully, it is back to the organics of the singer songwriter.

pc: thank god finally someone has come along who can acknowledge 60s rock music as their influence. for you it was the doors.

ch: i can't go by without mentioning morrison and the doors. i was 15 years old with a guitar in one hand, a surf board in the other and in my mates kombi van up the coast. realizing i was allowed to say the things i want to say is thanks to morrison for opening the door.

pc: are you horrified or thrilled they are back together?

ch: it was interesting news. as long as they don't try and be exactly as they were. that would be too late. it's not like inxs and michael disappearing. this has been a long time. it will be great to see manzerek on the keys again.

pc: moving on … videos in iceland. that's an interesting place to go for a video.

ch: reykjavik is awesome. i was in sydney at the time so i travelled 38 hours to get there and when i got there it was 20 hours of daylight. it was a crazy time. reykjavik is a big university town. to then travel half an hour out and be in this barren landscape with volcanic rock and all this moss around me, it looks like snow on the video clip but it is actually white moss covering the volcanic rock. i was in this '69 citroen with a local Icelandic girl. it was totally weird. it was the purpose of the clip to make it look like nothing else on earth.

pc: you do know we have citroens in australia. i'm sure there are one or two icelandic girls as well.

ch: i haven't met any in sydney. i have a great affiliation with scandinavia and denmark, all up that area. i went out with a danish girl and the icelandics speak danish as well so there was a bit of mutual ground going on.

pc: that was for the '2's company' song. that is the introductory song for you.

ch: yeah. it felt like it had to be the first song for whatever reason. it just summed up the entire album and it was also the last song written for the album. in some ways it resolves all my thoughts about travel and is somewhat reminiscent of what i had to go through to get there.

pc: 'waterline' has three singles already plotted out. it sounds very well planned.

ch: pretty much. i guess i felt strongly early on what i wanted to release. i think with the album i could have taken a number of paths when it comes to singles. i still might do. there is nothing totally in stone. the album will come out with '2's company', 'deep' then 'don't sail'. i can even tell you what is coming next. it felt natural to have those songs mapped out.

pc: talk about 'deep' then. is that another overseas song?

ch: yeah, definitely. it is very much an overseas song. it is about thinking back about sydney and my love for the water where i grew up on the coast. i used that metaphor to represent my feeling about being out of my depth instead of throwing myself into what i was doing. setting up the concept of the waterline and the invisible social line i was delving under and felt there was no return from. i chose to look at the world in a different way. i comes from all that.

pc: 'don't sail"

ch: i wrote that in the states. i had gone to london, things were going great, i had a relationship, music was gelling and i had a bunch of guys i was hanging with and living with. i felt like being away and being in the states some kind of moment was passing me by and i was missing out on something. 'don't sail' is about that, feeling fatefully drawn to something you really feel should be happening in a place you should be at but aren't there. it's about feeling like you are missing out on something.

pc: working on a debut album i would imagine would be quite strenuous. ian grimble was the producer, did he give you a comfort zone?

ch: definitely. i had chosen ian just by looking through the credits on my own albums. i never really thought about what a producer does because i'm not a technical person. i found ian . he very much did that. he complemented what i was doing. it wasn't overly strenuous because i had demoed all the songs before hand right down to string lines. it was more like a sonic process of going through the process of putting it all together.

pc: you've been out on tour with taxiride and the whitlams. you must now feel ready to go it alone.

ch: last year i had the chance to play with some guys and i had a lot of live experience. since i was 15 i have been kicking around in bands. i learned a lot about performing from the headliners.

charlton hill's waterline is released through sony.

- paul cashmere

Back