Finn Wolfhard embraces retro to become a rock and roll star
You’ve probably heard enough about Britain‘s hottest day of the year now, not least the claims of the heat in the UK being different than it is everywhere else. We’re supposedly not built for it.
Yet in the heart of Soho on a 35-degree Wednesday afternoon, you wouldn’t have thought it. The mood was bright, and with the pubs lined with wide-eyed people, I realised this great city was still a great advert for culture, even on a day when it was supposed to be at its worst.
My heat-induced hesitations about suggesting to Finn Wolfhard that we should meet for a pint during this interview, not only to welcome him to Far Out’s Existential Boozer but to get stuck into a British cultural pastime, had swiftly evaporated. If a global star of the big screen and now rock and roll were to come to London for a chat, we couldn’t let the heat deprive us of sharing a beer in Soho, as so many rock and roll icons before him have done.
“I think like the ‘70s is when things started to get a little more loud, I guess,” Wolfhard said as we got deep into conversation. A conversation that started with the weather, wiping our brows and suggesting that this is the hottest day since 1976, a golden number that soon led us to music. And what a year for music. Bowie released Station to Station, Eagles released Hotel California, and Ramones announced themselves with their self-titled debut.
It’s very apparent in this old London pub that these old icons of music course through the lifeblood of Wolfhard’s artistry. Visually, he cuts the figure of a ‘70s rocker sure, but there’s an alternative consideration in his manner that is befitting of that era. Despite Stranger Things putting the world very much at his feet, it’s clear that he is thinking about music in the sort of authentic mindset of old.
The level of fame Wolfhard has been exposed to in his early life simply isn’t normal. Being a part of a show firmly in the cultural zeitgeist, particularly at such a young age, can often predetermine one’s future. A prospective pivot into music then would seemingly result in a multi-record deal with a major label and a queue of hit-making producers bending around the door. But Wolfhard abstained from the commercially beaten path and set a tone way beyond his years, a tone informed by those musicians who didn’t play by the rules in the ‘70s and made things a little louder, in his words.
It started at the age of 15, when Wolfhard clutched onto any form of youth that he could and started a band with his mates, thrashing out youthful rock songs the old school way. “The first band I ever had when I was like 15, this band, Calpurnia. To me, the coolest thing ever is to be a part of a band, and that’s great to front a band.”
Then there was a “but…”, not the kind that implied Calpurnia wasn’t enough, but that it was just the start. The start of a long journey that has now brought him to his second solo album, Fire From The Hip, at the age of 23 and a record that maybe he quietly knows will take him to the place he’s even more quietly hoped to actually get. The top of the TV mountain felt nice, but the music peak on the other side looked nicer.
“The first solo record, it was a bit scary because I couldn’t kind of hide behind a project name. I couldn’t hide behind a band. It just was like, it’s me. Even though I had so many friends help me with that record, you know, still at the end of the day, there’s a bunch of tracks that are just like, I mean, most tracks are just me and a four-track, you know?”
The name Finn Wolfhard was going to be associated with a musical sound. His success didn’t afford him a gentle wade into unfamiliar waters but rather a swan dive into the deep end, where his music would either sink or swim. But once he was in, he soon realised he could touch the bottom and stand on his own two feet.
Happy Birthday made no bones about introducing Wolfhard as the artist he wanted to be. It was an unfiltered celebration of the raw and intimate acoustic garage-rock sound that inspired him to form a rock and roll band in the first place, and instantly, the marker was set. The industry wouldn’t mistake him for the next actor turned bubblegum pop musician, but rather just Finn Wolfhard. The solo name felt daunting, but also honest.
Now, Fire From Hip is the sound of Wolfhard firmly knowing that. He’s taken it one step further and self-produced a record that is thoroughly him in all its guises.
“There is a kind of weird balance you have to strike when it’s a solo project because, in my experience, I want to be able to have people express themselves in the way that they want to play a guitar the way that they want to, but also at the same time having confidence in yourself to know, like what you want,” he says, pondering the leadership position he has now earned.
Adding, “So I feel like every time I make something, at least with the solo project, I feel more and more decisive about, you know, what I want. And so this one I just produced myself”.
With an already intimate sound on Happy Birthday, the sort that channels the DIY spirit of a burgeoning band desperately trying to make a name for themselves with little to nothing at their disposal, you would be forgiven for thinking the self-produced approach on Fire From The Hip would double down on that.
The record’s second single ‘Tunnels’ feels like an extension of that for sure, but beyond that, Wolfhard used the independence to stretch his legs. Let’s remember, this is an artist who, across multiple platforms, has never really had full independence. Stranger Things saw him chaperoned into the big leagues, while Happy Birthday was a bold new move, but with the safety of external leadership. So the creative open road didn’t impose vulnerability but freedom, a chance for him to do pretty much whatever he felt right.
“I think it’s just like a little more mature of a record,” he proudly said, “I feel like it is maybe just a little grander in scale than the first record”.
Does ambition manifest itself in songwriting? On Happy Birthday, Wolfhard exercised a lifelong dream of travelling back in musical time and recording to tape, and it seems that Fire From The Hip follows suit. Therein lies a relatively easy out for Wolfhard sceptics, a chance to process his musical approach through the similarly nostalgic Stranger Things lens, but this simply has nothing to do with it.
But really, Wolfhard belongs in retrofitted studios where his deep love for bands of old can trickle into his own creativity, giving the guitar sound a very real and unfiltered sound, allowing the drums to be imperfect in times of instrumental breakdowns and for us to truthfully hear his lyrics as if he were telling us in a pub like this. All of this, in his hands, feels fresh and far removed from the pastiche culture critics want to align him with.
“I wanted to record it on cassette,” he said when asked about the recording process for the record. While there was no direct question related to the technical specifications of his set-up, it was clear that this was something he wanted to talk about wherever the conversation would allow. Something he was passionate about. Better yet, something that he believed fundamental to the listening process.
He continued referencing Happy Birthday, explaining, “So we did like a four-track, eight-track cassette. Because I wanted it to have a kind of a handmade quality to it and something that was also just… If you can write a song that is catchy and four tracks, that’s like, that’s kind of the best, and sometimes the most fun. But then, I was just thinking about how I wanted it to kind of keep evolving, but also wanting kind of an analogue feel. So we did 24 track tape this time, and obviously still used digital. I’m not a full-blown purist, but I try to do as much stuff with tape as possible.”
Finding that balance that allows him to adhere to tradition, but also listen to the songs’ needs, as any good producer should know. The result is tracks that simply wouldn’t have existed on Happy Birthday, or maybe in the line up of a shared band. “There’s one track called ‘Oscilloscope’…” he tells me, “I would have never have done that on the first album.”
It’s a track that proves to Wolfhard that magic does exist beyond the four-track rule. It’s still very much rock and roll, the sort that warrants the analogue approach of his style, but with samples sprinkled in and something The Minute Men would have been proud of. Then there’s ‘Maggie’, which reverts to songwriting type, but plays with instrumental layering in a way that the four-track band approach may have hindered.
With the keys to the toy shop, there is seemingly no one in Wolfhard’s way. No one but himself. A self-confessed perennial overthinker and an artist who’s been told who he is, before he was old enough to decide himself, Fire From The Hip is the sound of a musician coming out of their shell, but battling themselves as they do it.
“I really kind of wanted to play with this idea of identity and how you’re constantly shifting identity, and sometimes you’re doing things that are for your interest or against your interest,” Wolfhard explains of the underlying thematic vision for the record. It feels like the overarching question he’s continually asking himself is, is doing what he wants to do for himself, actually the right thing?
“It’s really easy to surround yourself with people that kind of keep you in a bubble,” he tells me. An otherwise innocuous sentence, but when said by one of entertainment’s most famous prospects, the danger is very clear. That bubble is one of comfort but control, and control has never worked well for a 23-year-old mind that’s fascinated by the authentic essence of the music they are pursuing. He added, “Whatever I can do to break out of that and not have that, and really just try to have these unique experiences”.
When success has come flooding in from projects that have taken on a life of their own, it’s hard to understand what the blueprint for self-made expression is. Does his own self-interest align with that of the wider music public? On the eve of his sophomore album release, the answer might feel unknowable for project anxiety is an ever-present feeling for artists. But from the outside, listening in, I don’t think there’s ever been a project more befitting of Finn Wolfhard the artist.
Fire From The Hip is decisive as it is reckless; it’s the sound of a 23-year-old figuring out life in a way he should in fact be afforded. Messy rock songs that liberate the performer from themselves are followed by intimate love-laced rock ballads that are riddled with lyrical mishaps, the sort that wisdom will look back on and laugh. That’s not perfection, but nor should it be. But what it is, is right for the Finn Wolfhard of the present, who, with this album, has proved ‘now’ is a timeless concept.
