Our obsession with Paul Frazer Clarke seems to grow with every listen. We last featured the artist for teasing his upcoming EP and exploring resilience, unity and breaking destructive patterns with Cycle, so naturally, when we heard that The Chalk Outline had dropped, we couldn’t wait to listen and share our experience.
Establishing the mood with a cinematic energy with an indie-pop, soft-rock adjacency, The Chalk Outline opens with vocals from Scottish songwriter Charlie Grant that remind us of early Phil Collins and Genesis. The poetic prowess is aligned with Paul’s previous releases – intelligently written, conceptually deep, yet relatable. There is an immediate warmth and polished yet human quality of the production. The guitar work also introduces a subtle John Mayer sensibility, whilst we can also feel the energy of Sting / The Police in the songwriting and melodic architecture.
As for the message, The Chalk Outline is a song about uncertainty. In that sense, it’s really relatable and obviously quite existential. It is about a relationship standing on shaky ground, emotional ambiguity and the space between hope and resignation. The chalk is an extremely evocative image, but juxtaposed by the brighter elements of the production.
Paul describes his admiration for the sophisticated songwriting traditions of Sting and John Mayer as “genuinely intelligent, musically rich, without losing sight of a great song”. His references also extend to Steely Dan, Prefab Sprout and Tears for Fears, alongside Joni Mitchell and Stevie Wonder.
In this current era of music, Paul says he is consciously attempting to preserve depth without sacrificing accessibility. As he puts it, people’s tolerance for listening deeply has been diluted by the streaming era, with so much choice fundamentally changing the way we consume music. Rather than fighting that reality, however, Paul has chosen to work within it. We love this approach. There is for sure a nostalgic quality to the record, but it never feels like a retro exercise.
For some context, Charlie Grant has a deep publishing history through EMI Music Publishing, BMG and Peermusic, and has co-written UK Top 10 singles and worked with artists including Simply Red, Melanie C and Marco Mengoni. Paul Frazer Clarke is a Perth-based composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist with more than three decades of professional experience. His career has traversed Epic Records, Warner Chappell, MCA Music and an extensive sync catalogue through Sonoton Music. He has written for film, television and media, with placements across The Oprah Winfrey Show, BBC, National Geographic and Dragon’s Den, whilst his collaborative history includes Grammy-winning slide guitarist Lucky Oceans, jazz-fusion legend Jeff Lorber and musicians connected to Fun Lovin’ Criminals and The Voice Australia. This all comes to life in the collaboration, as it is clearly a result of great experience.
Needless to say, we are once again completely sold on Paul Frazer Clarke, and we have added The Chalk Outline to our New Music Spotlight playlist and our TIMELESS playlist, whilst continuing to eagerly await the final coordinates of Paul’s EP.