About the Artist
With several dynamic sides to the English-born Northern Rivers musician, Charlie Gradon is an artist not so easily described - sage and considered as a songwriter, fervent and unrelenting in the studio, and off-the-wall on stage. His sophomore album Pain Game is out now, playing like a shuffled deck of memories from a relationship over time, capturing every high, low and everything in between with striking, unguarded honesty.
Where first single ‘Heathrow’ captured a love that never came to pass, ‘Better’ captures the one that stayed. It closes out Pain Game on a single unguarded confession - and a video that ends on a moment too good to have ever been scripted.
"‘Better’ opens with a confession: ‘you just chose me, and I didn’t object.’ I was tangled up in anxiety and already looking for a way not to be in love, and she just kind of bashed the door down anyway. This song is really what started this whole batch of material. You can hear my son through the door asking if he can play the drums while I’m mid-take. I kept going back over it because it’s just the cutest thing – it felt right to leave it in; it brings the song full circle." - Charlie Gradon
Often hailed as a prolific songwriter, Charlie spends much of his time in a home studio in Northern NSW. When he's not there, he can usually be found behind the kit for psych-rock lords Turtle Skull, who have been touring their third album, Being Here.”
But at the heart of all of his musical pursuits is songwriting. Pain Game builds on the foundation of his debut with an even stronger focus on storytelling. It is a collection of moments from a relationship over time: the dizzying highs, the reality-shifting lows, and everything in between.
"I wanted to make a love album that moved beyond the well-trodden ground of love and loss, and instead explored the intricacies of how love exists in the little moments of life. The whirlwind beginning, the fights about nothing, the weight of choosing someone to spend your life with, and how you continue to choose each other. It was important to me to shuffle these experiences so it wasn't a linear story. I wanted the songs to be interpreted by the listener in their own way, rather than simply listening to mine."
Like the deck of cards that inspired its title, Pain Game invites listeners to find their own memories within Charlie's.
