Quick-fire Questions: 10 minutes with Piglet
Just as the weather starts to turn bitterly cold, Piglet arrives with a stunning soundtrack for this typically blue period, where we’re hunkering down and traversing deep into our psyches, reflecting. The south-London-based Irish songwriter and producer Charlie Loane released his latest EP For Frank Forever on November 8th via Blue Flowers. It’s an absolute masterclass in sincerity, with the words and delivery piercing and the fusion of traditional instrumentation with digital textures profound.
While all of Piglet’s music has been brilliant so far, stirring something deep within, the tracks comprising For Frank Forever have another significance. The EP is dedicated to his late friend Frank (AKA Trib), who passed away last summer. Loane finished writing the songs just before he died, and most of the lyrics developed out of experiences they shared through organising together as part of a mutual aid group.
“Mutual aid organising taught me so much about myself and the people around me,” Piglet explains, “It laid bare the many ways that capitalism fails all of us and brought me closer to the love which sustains us through this failure and builds in us the strength and motivation to fight for something better.”
The latest single from the EP is the title track, which follows on from the defiant, ‘white knuckles’. It, too, has a much broader resonance, both for Loane’s life and others. The eponymous single is about “the gradual process of coming to understand that poor living standards, your community being demonised, systemic racism and transphobia, exhausting badly paid jobs (etc. etc. etc.) are not just facts of life, or what you deserve, they are the logical outcomes of white supremacist capitalism.”
Yet it’s not all negative. The song offers a sharp glimmer of hope that things don’t have to be this way. “It’s also about how all this can change,” he continues, “How it has to change, how it will change, and how it won’t happen on its own. There won’t be one moment, one act of god, or an isolated instance of peaceful collective revelation. Like everything else, it is a process, a process you should be a part of in any way you can.”
Piglet heads out on a headline tour of the UK on November 12th, starting at Oxford’s The Library before wrapping up at London’s Corsica Studios on December 7th. Just before the EP arrives and he heads out on tour, Loane also answered our quick-fire questions to get to know us a bit better. Find the answers below.
Quick-fire Questions with Piglet:
1. Describe Piglet in three words.
“Hopefully, good music.”
2. What are you reading at the moment?
“You Have Not Yet Been Defeated by Alaa Abd El-Fattah.”
3. What was the first song you ever learned?
“I was so into pop-punk when I started trying to learn guitar, so it probably would have been a Fall Out Boy song, lol”.
4. What’s a classic album you’ve never listened to?
“I looked up ‘classic albums’ there to see what they were; lots of Metallica on there who I’ve never listened to, really.”
5. What would be your dream festival to play?
“All Together Now in Waterford, played there a few years ago with another band and had a great time; any excuse to get back to Ireland, and I’ll take it.”
6. What’s on your rider?
“If we can get anything that resembles dinner, we are extremely happy.”
7. Do you believe in aliens?
“Sure, why not.”
8. When are you at your most creative?
“When my feelings about whatever I’m writing about have had time to settle. Reading fiction definitely helps me write, social media definitely doesn’t. I feel like it’s all about having space in my brain to let my mind wander without losing focus on what I’m writing.”
9. What’s the best album of 2024 so far?
“Ooo, hard question, hmmm, favourites from this year are probably Below The Waste by Goat Girl and Humble As The Sunby Bob Vylan.”
10. Who are your dream dinner party guests?
“Leila Khaled, Billy Woods, and my mate Trib – would be a laugh; no idea what I’d cook, though.”
11. Have you ever cried at a gig?
“So many times! Particularly when watching close friends perform. I’m going to see Lankum pretty soon and I’m pretty sure I’ll cry loads if they play ‘Hunting the Wren’.”
12. Are the Beatles overrated?
“Yeah.”
13. Where is the best venue in the world?
“I love the Ulster Hall in Belfast.”
14. What was the last movie you watched?
“Stress Positions.“
15. What is your most controversial cultural opinion?
“Shouldn’t be controversial at all, but I think all musicians/artists have a moral obligation to boycott shows with sponsors who are invested in the current genocide of Palestinians. Check out PACBI, BDS and Bands Boycott Barclays if you’re not yet clued up on this.”
