In a candid and at times emotional interview, John Mitchell reveals the personal traumas – old and new – that went into the making of A Model Life, his harrowing yet ultimately uplifting fifth album as Lonely Robot.

Words: Grant Moon

Two sides to every story: John Mitchell faces his past.

Images: Tom Barnes

“IT ALWAYS SURPRISES ME THAT ANYBODY WOULD LIKE WHAT I DO. I MEAN, I’M GRATEFUL – EVERYBODY NEEDS VALIDATION – AND I SHOULD BE MORE MINDFUL OF IT REALLY.”

Steven Wilson recently told John Mitchell that A Model Life – the fifth Lonely Robot record – is his favourite among all the things he’s done. “Steven asked, ‘How long did you spend doing it?’” Mitchell tells Prog with a cackle, “and when I said about four weeks start to finish he said, ‘Fuck off!’ But if you’re getting three hours’ sleep a night, then getting up and working all day, like a robot ironically, that’ll happen. I do get into a trance-like state with music, that’s how I best operate. Writing songs is like catching lightning in a bottle.” Months after that creative fever, Mitchell’s in a physical one as he talks to Prog. He’s just returned to his Reading home from Berlin where he went to see Queen and Adam Lambert, and caught Covid for the third time. He’s feeling rough, but the past few years have helped him refine ‘buggering on’ to an art form.

The 2020 lockdown meant that Outhouse Studios – his recording studio, a large chunk of his livelihood – had to shut shop, and bookings have yet to recover. Coming out in July that same year, Feelings Are Good was his first Lonely Robot album since he hung up the astronaut aesthetic that characterised 2015 debut Please Come Home and the following two releases. With the world on its head and live shows outlawed, the record got lost in the Covidian shuffle.