“Free From Me” is my favorite song I’ve written so far. Jeremy Hatcher went absolutely bonkers on the production, turning my emo campfire jam into a stadium-crushing behemoth. I love how it starts out all ethereal and meandering, with an extended Johnny Greenwood inspired guitar solo disintegrating into feedback that'd make Sonic Youth proud. Oh, the catharsis, my friends. An electric guitar played terrifyingly loud’s about the best thing there is.

This song’s a few years old now, and it’s a little bittersweet looking back on where I was at the time - newly single, trying to make sense of my rapidly changing life as the Al Stone project grew. While I’m a different guy to the one who wrote the verses, the chorus still resonates - if we live unapologetically as ourselves, it’ll all make sense in time.

Take a listen, if you like. Lyrics below…

every time I close my eyes

I’m haunted by the starlight in a different sky

the memories of that moment in Mobile

I’ll escape my broken world

I’ll learn to love this southern girl

I’ve long outgrown my gloomy home

in the state of Evergreen

everyone of us can change, change our ways

if we learn to live life out loud

I know I will never be free from me

so I’ll have to seek shelter from the storm

now I’m paralyzed by fright

I felt it in a Catskill’s night

now I’m blind out here in Brooklyn

but the sun’s not in my eyes

in the Rockies, now, I chase

a girl with whom I can’t keep pace

another angel hates me now

it’s one more smile I’ll never see again

everyone of us can change, change our ways

if we learn to live life out loud

I know I will never be free from me

so I’ll have to seek shelter from the storm