John Mitchell on Lonely Robot's "A Model Life"
The most personal album in John Mitchell's storied career stands among his best work.
Thank you for spending part of your day with Michael’s Record Collection. Some artists seem incapable of turning out subpar work, no matter what bands they join or which other musicians they work with. I recently got to speak with someone like that in songwriter and multi-instrumentalist John Mitchell.
Some know Mitchell primarily as a guitarist — an instrument with which his proficiency is unquestioned. He’s played in a number of bands that are either entrenched in the progressive rock genre (Arena, Frost*, Blind Ego), merely flirt with prog (Kino, It Bites), or have little to do with that style of music at all (The Urbane). Recording as a solo artist but under the “band” name Lonely Robot, Mitchell continues to produce and release quality music and I caught up with him to ask about the upcoming fifth album under that name, A Model Life, which drops tomorrow.
Let’s get into the story.
Songwriter/musician/producer John Mitchell says he isn’t nearly as busy as he seems. Turning out music with a variety of bands and projects, Mitchell seemingly has a new release coming out every few weeks, but in fact he’s recorded roughly 30 albums since 1998, which is just over one new album per year.
“I’m actually quite lazy,” he said. “Considering I’m 49 years old now and I’ve been doing music, I suppose, semi-professionally or whatever since I was about 23. It's not really that much. It's just one album a year, or sometimes I’ve played on other people's albums. To be honest with you, the process of writing my own music has really been since around 2015. Before that, I've always been in bands and writing with other people. So, It Bites was largely written by myself and John Beck. Kino was largely myself and John Beck, myself and Pete Trewavas, and myself, Pete Trewavas, and John Beck.”
Mitchell has been releasing his solo work under the moniker Lonely Robot since 2015, starting with the standout debut, Please Come Home. The advice Mitchell received from the Inside Out Music label is that bands tend to out-sell solo artists, so releasing music under a band name makes sense, but Mitchell is also that titular lonely robot.
“I thought Lonely Robot was quite an astute name for it really, because given the nature of the way that I write music,” he said. “And some people have described me as slightly autistic — I don’t mean to make light of that because I have been diagnosed slightly on the autistic spectrum. But you know, there is a sort of sense of, you know, when I make a record, I get up at seven in the morning and I work until about 11 o'clock at night and then go to bed and get up and do it all again. And it is sort of like a music factory for about three or four weeks.”
Mitchell is set to release his fifth Lonely Robot album since 2015, and he said A Model Life took about four weeks from start to finish, including writing, recording, and polishing up. I’ll get into that album a bit more below.
Map of the Past
The primary band Mitchell is part of is Arena, with which he’s recorded seven studio albums — with an eighth slated for later this calendar year. That’s keyboardist Clive Nolan’s band, but Mitchell is an integral part of it and his guitar is part of Arena’s signature sound. That’s due in part to the band having had multiple lead singers over the years, but it’s also the clean and gorgeous tone Mitchell gets out of his guitar and his ability to make relatively simple parts sound bigger and more epic. You can not only sing along with Mitchell’s solos, but they also make the listener feel something. There’s an emotional connection with his playing that most of the more technical (read: faster) guitarists can’t replicate.
Mitchell has been part of other bands that he’s put together — one of the best was The Urbane, which is a departure from the progressive rock he’s more well-known for these days. However, he’s had a tendency to get disillusioned with some of his more famous bands to some degree, due to the members of those bands having other commitments that limit their availability.
That happened right off the bat with Kino — an excellent band that emerged in 2005 with the stellar debut album Picture — featuring Mitchell, It Bites keyboardist John Beck, Marillion bassist Pete Trewavas, and former Porcupine Tree drummer Chris Maitland. Unfortunately, Maitland bailed immediately after Picture was recorded to take a gig with a steadier paycheck. And Trewavas was often busy with his primary band, and as time went by he was also getting his Edison’s Children project off the ground.
“I was so disheartened by it,” Mitchell said. “I was very naïve about lots of things and I wanted (Kino) to be like a proper band. But before we’d even finished the album, Chris Maitland announced that he wouldn’t be able to commit to it after all, because he was going off on tour with — it was either Rock of Ages, or We Will Rock You, or Mamma Mia, I can’t remember which one. Because he’d been in Porcupine Tree all that time and he’d not made very much money, and he wanted a steady income. So, I understand his reasoning for wanting to go on tour with a West End production. But already my dream lineup had evaporated like that.”
From the ashes of Kino arose the reformation of It Bites, a band that enjoyed some success in the late 1980s, especially in the UK. Replacing the band’s iconic former front man, Francis Dunnery, was a risky venture but Mitchell never wavered — nor did he try to be Dunnery. It Bites released the wonderful The Tall Ships album in 2008, featuring the epic masterpiece “This is England,” as well as other standout tracks such as “Oh My God,” “Playground,” and the record’s title track. However, it took four years for It Bites to release its next record — 2012’s Map of the Past.
“We did It Bites and then we did two albums with that and then I got disheartened with that as well,” Mitchell said. “And I came to the conclusion that I don’t really like being in bands, because you have to depend on other people.”
Mitchell said It Bites is under contract to do another album so there will be a third album with him at some point. As far as Kino is concerned?
“I never say never,” Mitchell said.
All the while Kino and It Bites were working together, Mitchell remained in Arena and joined Jem Godfrey’s modern prog rock band, Frost* (the band name’s stylization includes the asterisk, so no need looking below for an explanation). Frost* released the amazing debut Milliontown in 2006, and has changed its sound and approach with each of its successive albums. The fourth and most recent of Frost*’s albums, Day and Age, came out just last year and was perhaps the group’s most well-received record since Milliontown.
Feelings are Good
If Mitchell’s songs with Lonely Robot sound familiar, it’s because his writing in bands like Kino and It Bites held nothing back from the solo artist he is. Mitchell is the connective tissue between the different projects and some tonal overlap is to be expected. The first three albums Mitchell released under that name hold together as an intended trilogy, and all include an astronaut on the cover art that lends those Lonely Robot albums an air of mystery, with perhaps even a bit of menace. This is especially true with 2017’s The Big Dream, which has a cover reminiscent of something out of a particularly surreal and scary episode of Doctor Who.
The fourth Lonely Robot album, Feelings are Good, also has a darkness to its cover artwork. As a result, the line drawing on the cover of A Model Life of two people hugging presents an instant indication that this album will provide listeners with something different. The difference is how deep Mitchell dives into his own psyche to deal with various issues, including some that have been with him for most of his life, such as the loss of his father when he was a boy. The recent breakup of a long-term relationship creeps through in several songs as well.
It was shortly after Mitchell’s father died that he fell in love with his first favorite record — A-ha’s Hunting High and Low. When Mitchell told me about that being his first favorite record, he assumed that I probably expected him to say (Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s) Tarkus or something of that nature. But anyone who spends time listening to Mitchell’s music can’t miss his considerable pop sensibilities. These can be traced all the way back to that first album with which he fell in love.
“Ostensibly they were like pinups, weren’t they? Handsome young guys and ladies loved them,” Mitchell said of A-ha. “But if you actually listen to (Hunting High and Low), there’s a lot more sort of darkness going on. There's a lot bleakness about that record. Some of the lyrics are very bleak and the orchestration is very epic. It's anything but just a pop album.”
Much of the world’s best music has been born out of a musician’s anger or an attempt to cope with pent-up personal feelings — many of them negative. And Mitchell’s latest record is his attempt to come to grips with feelings of loss — of his father, his mother, and his longtime girlfriend. Out of those bad feelings, as well as the good feelings associated with fond memories of those individuals, comes something good.
A Model Life
Mitchell has made an honest, candid, and personal album in A Model Life. He lays his soul bare for all to see. As a result, the album ranks among his best work and should stand alongside the best rock albums of 2022. He played all of the instruments except the drums. With his regular drummer, Craig Blundell, busy on tour with Steve Hackett, Mitchell went back to the drum tracks Blundell recorded for the previous Lonely Robot albums and pieced together the parts he wanted for each of the new songs.
“Craig Blundell has been on tour with Steve Hackett for about 6 million years now,” Mitchell said. “So, he wasn't available, and I had to make a judgment call: Do I get somebody else in? And I don't really want to get somebody else in. So, what I did was I kind of recycled Craig. I kind of went through all the MIDI on all the Lonely Robot albums…I made a composite of Craig’s MIDI DNA.”
Lonely Robot isn’t technical progressive rock. A Modern Life will never be confused with Close to the Edge or Foxtrot. Nor should it be, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t interesting musical choices or passages that seem more simple on the surface than they are. Mitchell’s pop/rock sensibilities shine through and, despite the appearance here and there of a difficult-sounding drum part or a particularly delicious guitar solo, it is more “prog-adjacent” than outright progressive rock.
“At least there’s some guitar solos on this one,” quipped Mitchell.
Album opener “Recalibrating” is a song Mitchell wrote about trying to figure out his place again in the wake of a relationship that ended. The world looks different after the change — alien, “cracked,” and “broken.” In contrast to the imagery, “Recalibrating” is an energetic, up-tempo track that shares a little musical DNA with some of his work in Frost*, while standing apart from that band in tone and production. There’s a scorching (angry?) guitar solo late in the song that I find to be one of the album’s highlights.
Here are some of the others, for me:
“Starlit Stardust” has a big chorus and an emotional vocal performance by Mitchell that make it one of my favorites on the record. Mitchell includes imagery here of an incident early in his childhood that nearly took his life when he fell in the River Thames and was carried away. That incident was paired in the song with another personal theme that Mitchell addressed, and he said he hopes it can cleanse some of the darkness that he’s dealt with over the years.
“(Falling in the Thames was) my earliest memory and it could well have been my last memory,” he said. “So that’s referenced in this song. And the day that my mom died is also referenced in this song. I have a lot of repeated nightmares of those two events in my life that crop up. So, I thought if I wrote a song about those experiences, and indeed my mom, it might help abate those nightmares. We’ll see. I haven’t had a nightmare since.”
Another one of the album’s gems is “Mandalay,” an intensely gorgeous interlude of melancholy that clocks in at less than two minutes. It’s another song that relates to his recent breakup.
“I should point out that there's a film called Rebecca. Alfred Hitchcock. ‘Laurie’ Olivier stars in it,” Mitchell said. “The house that (Olivier’s character) lives in is spelled different. I spelled it ‘Mandalay’ as in Vegas. It was a favorite film of my ex-girlfriend’s, and I really liked it as well. At the end, the house burns down, and so it’s a metaphor, I suppose, for the end of a relationship. Deep stuff, huh? (laughs)”
Closing song “In Memoriam” stands up well against the best album closers in Mitchell’s songwriting catalog. Mitchell wrestles with both the realization that he wasn’t meant to follow in his father’s footsteps and the guilt of failing in a perceived responsibility of having to do just that. His lead guitar work is warm and comforting like a favorite old blanket.
The above tracks are my favorites from the album, but others may gravitate toward the industrial-pop of “Digital God Machine,” the reflective tracks “Species in Transition” and “A Model Life,” the Frost*-esque “Island of Misfit Toys,” or the atmospheric “Rain Kings.”
The personal and raw subject matter of the songs on A Model Life make for an emotional listen. Mitchell somehow manages to fill the album with musical hooks, melodic choruses, and guitar solos that tap directly into your soul. All of it is wrapped in immaculate production that lets the listener hear each instrument and harmony vocal clearly. It’s an album that you can sing along with, but if you’re paying attention, it will also make you feel.
Those unfamiliar with Mitchell/Lonely Robot will find in A Model Life a wonderful starting point for exploring his entire catalog, while those who already know his considerable body of work will simply find more music with which to fall in love.
Tracklist:
Recalibrating
Digital God Machine
Species in Transition
Starlit Stardust
The Island of Misfit Toys
A Model Life
Mandalay
Rain Kings
Duty of Care
In Memoriam
Find out more about Mitchell and his Lonely Robot music at johnmitchellhq.com.
For my full interview with John Mitchell, please check out the video embedded below or download Episode 75 of the Michael’s Record Collection podcast. In addition to the new Lonely Robot record, John was gracious, candid, and very forthright in answering a number of questions about the upcoming Arena album, his transition from The Urbane to Kino, how he found his way into Frost*, and many other topics.
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