Ones To Watch 2010: Alan Pownall

Wistful, romantic singer/songwriter

Flicking through Alan Pownall’s Rolodex will give you a fair impression of the musical company he keeps: there’s Adele – she personally invited the singer to support her on tour; Mumford And Sons – Alan shared a flat with their Winston and Marcus (plus Jay Jay Pistolet). Throw in single releases for Young And Lost Club and Pure Groove and you start to get the impression: folk-based singer-songwriter with a penchant for the wistful and romantic.

Now signed with Mercury, with an album due in May, the ex-art student revealed his initial inspiration to perform: “I remember seeing Kid Harpoon and thinking, it’s just him and his guitar and he’s doing it, he’s doing his thing. And I remember seeing Adele and thinking, ‘Shit, I’ve got a lot of work to do.’ Everyone from Jack Penate to the Mystery Jets to The Maccabees, I thought these people are just like me, maybe I can do this.”

Building his own reputation was easy – posting his work on MySpace found attention coming from the right place, but sometimes for the wrong reasons; his acoustic covers of Beyonce and Kanye West is not something he’s eager to repeat. “Definitely not! Had I known that they were going to have the reaction that they had I probably would have been a bit more careful. All of a sudden I was the guy who did pop songs in a sort of acoustic fashion. I had no idea at the time that it was sort of going to be perceived that way.”

Alan didn’t have to look too far for inspiration. He had studied art in Milan, no less (“I never really planned on doing music, music is still really fresh to me. I’ve only really been playing the guitar for about three years now.”), but it was ironically his return home that played the biggest part in his muse: “I’m definitely happier in London. It was almost as if I was walking up the wrong path and I kind of knew it was wrong. When I came back I knew I was in the right place. It was almost what I needed to sort of rediscover London. I’d almost come back as a tourist. And I was a tourist because I had a foreign girlfriend who came back with me and I showed her around London. I find you never really explore the place where you grew up. When you move away you get a chance to see it objectively. I remember coming back one time with this girl saying ‘I love London!’”

No doubt the homespun troubadour will be seeing a lot more of the country over the coming months. Hopefully it will have the same effect on his music…

Words by Simon Harper

Where: Sunderland
What: Indie
Unique Fact: Guitarist Pete Gofton is TV presenter Lauren Laverne’s brother and was also in Kenickie.
Get 3 Songs: ‘Hunger’, ‘Fragile’, ‘Tender IS The Night’

Get Alan Pownall’s ‘Heart of Hearts’ as part of Clash Magazine’s Ones To Watch 2010 download album HERE.

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