From teenage guitar prodig y in The Coral, to master singer-songwriter, via shifts for Arctic Monkeys and production for Michael Head, BILL RYDER-JONES has packed a lot into his 40 years. But there’s a lot more to unpack, too, beginning with the childhood tragedy that’s defined his life and music ever since. “I’d spent years screaming into the void,” he tells DORIAN LYNSKEY.

THE 2020 LOCKDOWN WAS NO PICNIC FOR ANYBODY, BUT FOR BILL RYDER-JONES it was “fucking unbearable”. His girlfriend of three months was meant to be stopping over with him in West Kirby before moving to Los Angeles but they were thrown together indefinitely. His mental health, already precarious, went downhill fast. Bad habits escalated. The relationship did not last. “We were both mad,” he says now. “The whole thing was a blur. I was taking so much Valium just to deal with the news. I’m unquestionably a different person since the pandemic.”

Ryder-Jones’s only lifeline was writing songs with titles such as This Can’t Go On and Nothing To Be Done. From that horrendous period was born Iechyd Da, the most expansive and (surprisingly) hopeful record of his career. Since leaving psychedelic urchins The Coral in 2008, his tuneful late-night confessions have taken different forms – a Wir ral Bill Callahan on 2013’s A Bad Wind Blows In My Heart, skewed indie-rock frontman on 2015’s West Kirby County Primary, king of pain on 2018’s Yawn – but never one so abundantly beautiful. Three years in the making, the album has the grand cosmic ache of Mercur y Rev’s Deserter ’s Songs: big-sky music for introverts.

“Making the record becomes your life,” he says. “It’s a million miles away from when a group is three albums in and says, ‘We’ve got to get a synth.’ It was like, How the fuck am I going to get through this next two weeks? To write about myself and make it sound pretty just consumed me. Because I had so much time I just kept going. Like Forrest Gump.” He gives a rich, r ueful laugh. “Keep running.”

Something on his mind: Bill Ryder-Jones at home in West Kirby, Wirral, 2023.

Photography by MARIEKE MACKLON

William, it was really something: The Coral take the Hoylake air, 2002 (from left) Ian Skelly, Paul Duffy, Lee Southall, James Skelly, Nick Power, Bill Ryder-Jones.