He Won’t Knock affirms Vine’s journalistic lyrical style in which story and character is prominent. It echoes the literate musicality of many of his favourite artists: the poems of Leonard Cohen, early Shins records, and The National. Vine’s first release for the label, the upcoming Celeste EP, was again recorded at his home studio and then embellished during an intense six-day period with producer Cam Blackwood (London Grammar, Florence + The Machine). That interest would later result in Vine signing to Parlophone in May 2014. He attributes part of his eventual recovery process to the excitement of writing new material and growing international attention following his domestic success. Not that Vine could appreciate the moment due to the continuing effects of his injury. Nine month after the accident, an EP was finally issued with the focus falling on lead track Celeste, an upbeat, summer haze of a song which became one of the biggest airplay hits of the year. As Vine’s recovery progressed at a torturously slow pace, plans to release the recordings were put on hold. His understandably tumultuous emotions were heightening by lurking insomnia. In the months that followed, he remained heavily concussed and weak with fatigue. He spent three months completely immobilised in a neck and body brace. He admits to being lucky, but his injuries were severe. 97% of people who suffer this type of injury will suffer spinal cord damage or even death. Vine’s neck was broken at the C6 segment. I landed on my head and snapped my neck.” It dug its front hooves in and flipped me off. “We were cantering along the side of a river in a forest,” he recalls. It was uneventful until the ill-fated final shot. Vine appeared in a music video for his friend’s band, which involved him riding a horse. But two weeks later, everything changed in a moment. His new songs represented a new beginning with a new style the conclusion of his artistic gestation. Encouraged by the positive reaction greeted to a collection of instrumentals which he recorded at home with his usual method of layering track-upon-track-upon-track, Vine spent an industrious fortnight building them into fully-fledged songs packed with his narrative, mythological lyrical style. The versatility of his musicianship allows him to play almost every instrument that you might find in a conventional band – from the piano, which he learned during a self-taught ten-hour-a-day / three-month-long education that was initiated by a love of Rachmaninov and Chopin, to percussion which can be as simple as “banging my desk or a doorframe.”Ĭut to the summer of 2012. Prompted in part by his brother’s advice, Vine learned to let go of his perfectionism in order to allow his songs to take their own flight outside of the confines of his home studio, a trait that developed by subsequent work as a musician for hire – sessions, adverts and anything else that helped to pay his rent. Studying music didn’t suit him, he admits, quoting Telamon of Arcadia: “It’s one thing to study war and another to live the warrior’s life.” In terms of a young musician’s experience, that translates as there being “a self-imposed barrier because you value the outcome of your work far too highly, to the point that it defines you.” Vine battled against the grain to maintain his journey. Raised on his parents’ record collection – Hendrix, The Beatles, Tchaikovsky – Vine first started playing guitar at the age of thirteen, his admittedly terrible teenage grunge band influenced by Nirvana and Foo Fighters, the lineage of which he traced back to guitar’s own God Eric Clapton and Cream. God moves in mystery ways, and His intrusion upon young Vine’s life was unorthodox. It will linger and gnaw on my mind until it's done.” “Once a real idea finds its way into your head, it takes on its own life and almost begins to force its own way into being. “Writing can be simultaneously the hardest, most infuriating and the easiest thing in the world,” declares the Auckland-raised / London-based songwriter Ezra Vine when quizzed about the initial inspiration behind his growing body of work.
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