Love Letter To A Record: Thornhill's Jacob Charlton On Jeff Buckley's 'Grace'

Many of us can link a certain album to pivotal moments in our lives. Whether it’s the first record you bought with your own money, the chord you first learnt to play on guitar, the song that soundtracked your first kiss, the album that got you those awkward and painful pubescent years or the one that set off light bulbs in your brain and inspired you to take a big leap of faith into the unknown – music is often the catalyst for change in our lives and can even help shape who we become.

In this series, Music Feeds asks artists to reflect on their relationship with music and share with us stories about the effect music has had on their lives.

Jacob Charlton, Thornhill – ‘Grace’ By Jeff Buckley (1994)

Jeff Buckley’s Grace is actually one of my mum’s favourite records, making it the soundtrack of my life before I was able to walk. My parents would always play music around the house when I was young or in the car to school and we would always sing ‘Hallelujah’ or ‘Grace’ together because they was her favourites, but if I’m honest, I never loved them so I didn’t listen to the whole album until a lot later in my life.

I then went through my heavy music phase, where I’d totally disregard any music that sounded like Jeff Buckley. I kind of forgot about the album until I stumbled upon it looking through my old iPod nano. The nostalgia of the record made me instantly look it up and I listened back and I fell in love with it as a whole and with a newfound appreciation for it.

Ethan (McCann, guitar) and I actually both grew up with this record so it means a lot to both of us. From a writing perspective, we both tend to pull influence from Jeff Buckley as a songwriter. He had a way of using rhythmic guitar and drum parts with floating vocals to make an atmosphere of movement and power without actually screaming or yelling or using distorted guitars and I think, as a band, that really resonated with how we wanted to write. To make songs move and feel like they take you on a journey is something that we aspire to and this record does that perfectly.

I think as an artist, being comfortable and unafraid to explore genres and styles in one record is the golden standard of musicianship, pushing the limits and breaking the rules in music is the most important thing. I think that really stood out to me on Grace and is something that we aspire to carry over to Thornhill.

This record also means the most to me vocally. I really look up to Jeff as a singer/musician and hope to have the amount of skill and control over my voice as he did. I always listen to the way he sings and projects his voice, especially on his live albums, and it makes me want to practice and push my vocal chords to become the best I can be too.

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Melbourne heavy five-piece Thornhill have just unleashed their towering debut album, ‘The Dark Pool’ and to celebrate, they’ll be hitting the road for a celebratory headline tour in November. Catch all the dates below!