276°
Posted 20 hours ago

The Gritterman

£9.9£99Clearance
ZTS2023's avatar
Shared by
ZTS2023
Joined in 2023
82
63

About this deal

Orlando Weeks: That’s the traction engine my grandad restored. He was the inspiration for The Gritterman , and I like how the drawing was done by someone called Wheeler. Something about that felt fitting. In a tiny, second-floor room in South London, Orlando Weeks has built himself a miniature world. A narrow space at the top of the house he shares with his partner and their son, it has the feel of a particularly creative teenager’s bedroom: posters, books and trinkets line every wall, with pieces of clothing hanging on the door and a small desk providing a studious focal point. This is the place he comes to write, print, stamp, draw and think.

In his own lifetime, Bill’s work became obsolete, rather like the Gritterman’s job in the story. “Got a letter from the council: Dear Sir... your services are no longer required,” the Gritterman recounts, adding: “I read somewhere that there’s a tarmac now that can de-ice itself. I’m not sure I want to live in a world where the B2116 doesn’t need gritting.” That’s the album that will be the Orlando Weeks classic? “Yeah, just four stinkers and then one opus,” he laughed. In the past, Weeks said he also used the excuse that you shouldn’t question life’s joys as a way to avoid writing happier songs. “That’s just lazy, though,” he said. By allowing himself to now do just that and delve deeper into joyful experiences, he added he had learned that they are just as complicated as darker emotions. “And you don’t tarnish the joy by thinking about the joy – you just balloon it up. It’s given me an appreciation and love for music that I think I’d always known was great, but I just felt was outside of my jurisdiction.”This tale of wonder is a beloved story from most people’s childhoods, remembered for its beautiful magic and a familiar nostalgia that will restore every reader’s childish and nostalgic excitement for festivity and Christmas. E.T.A. Hoffman really created a must-read for the festive season to get absorbed into the Christmas spirit.

Pearson is a musician that he has had a connection with for years, having written with her and her brother when they were in the band Ardyn. “Watching her rebuild everything out of the ashes of that project was amazing,” he said. “I think that’s a testament to her ability as a musician, but also this buoyant personality that she has.” Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial? A kind of Raymond Briggs for the millennial generation – The Maccabees, incidentally, covered Walking in the Air – The Gritterman offers a vignette of English life that speaks directly to our national sense of obligation and stoicism. Dislocation, too. It’s the story of an elderly widower who goes out alone at Christmas time to grit snowy roads – that is, until he learns from the council that his “services are no longer required”.A story of love, loss, and hope. One More Christmas at The Castle is a heart-warming tale of love found in the most unexpected places as Dido, a party planner, finds herself planning for more than she bargained for with Sabine, an old widow who knows this is her last Christmas. There’s also a castle that unveils secrets and old crushes are brought to light again. Praised for its beautiful writing and plot, this is a great way to escape into the festive spirit of family. This tale emphasises the importance of kindness and compassion, manifested through ghosts of the past, present, and future that haunt a bitter Scrooge until, on Christmas, he finally decides to change his old ways.

Orlando Weeks – the former Maccabees frontman-turned-solo artist – is not the type of person who gets caught up in the extravagance and over-indulgence of the festive season. Not that he’s a Scrooge ‘bah humbug’ sort of bloke, mind. The London-born musician simply prefers a gentler, understated version of Christmas – much like his favourite festive children’s stories. Orlando Weeks: This is the artwork for the new record. And I’m trying to think… I’ve been trying to figure out how to make something that will be like a special giveaway for people. I guess like a prize draw or something like that. For those Hop Up prints, I’ve been printing with lino onto cyanotype, and I think that’s how I’m going to do it. But this one here is straight onto the cyanotype. Orlando Weeks: The megaphone is in the video for ‘Deep Down Way Out’. I guess I premiered ‘Deep Down’ and ‘Big Skies, Silly Faces’ with the BBC Concert Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall, and I used a megaphone there. I thought it might be just a good prop, but it sounded good. Arcade Fire always use them, and the Flaming Lips; I feel like that’s a good heritage that I hope to follow. There’s already been talk of turning The Gritterman into an animated film, much like Raymond Briggs’ The Snowman (“I’d love that; that’s the long-term ambition”); but, before that happens, Weeks is firmly focussed on bringing The Gritterman to the live stage. It’s an approach that’s encapsulated in the album’s first single ‘Big Skies Silly Faces’. Its choral, dream-like beauty makes focal points of aspects that might be swamped by a more boisterous production: the otherworldly vocal harmonies courtesy of Katy J Pearson, the heartening piano embellishments, how Ben Reed’s bass grows from a supporting texture to the forefront of the sound.Orlando Weeks: I’m not technical at all. One of the things I like about making stamps or prints or books is that it’s very basic, very analogue. The whole process, from drawing to making things, is very straightforward. Say with stamp-making, it channels your attention and focuses you really nicely, because you’re using tools, and getting a gouge in your thumb with one of those is no fun. Orlando Weeks: ‘We had a difficult time making the last Maccabees album, but the reason for the split is our thing’ On the Maccabees’ first album, Weeks wrote a song, Good Old Bill, about his grandfather’s death. Listening to it now, the chorus line, “The engine won’t start without him”, seems to take on a new significance. Weeks explains the inspiration for the song: “My grandad left one of his traction engines to a steam museum in Cornwall. In his final years, he’d go and visit it and help with the upkeep, that sort of thing. On the day he died, my grandmother got a phone call. It was the museum. For the first time, the engine he’d donated wouldn’t start.”

Review’s list includes books that are viewed as classics, more contemporary options and cover an array of themes and settings. For cost savings, you can change your plan at any time online in the “Settings & Account” section. If you’d like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial. Weeks says the project was partly inspired by the similarity between his own circumstances and his father’s retirement. “I didn’t see my dad retire and think: right, I’m going to write an illustrated book. But I think it definitely played a part, along with beginning to question my own purpose and where my passions lie; thinking about how I fill my time, and seeing how he does. It’s very difficult, if you’ve invested in what you do, to allow yourself the freedom of not doing it any more, of not working all the hours that God sends.” The most elated moment of a beatific set, ‘Look Who’s Talking Now’ is the most unguarded moment that Weeks has shared with the world. It’s all there in the effortlessly elegant lyric, “Look who’s falling in love again.” “I feel it over and over again and don’t have, or even feel as though i need to have, better words to say it.”

Of course, Paul Whitehouse isn’t the only high-profile figure to lend his support to the Gritterman project. In a beautiful moment of life coming full circle, Weeks received an endorsement from the man who made him fall in love with quiet, understated Christmas stories in the first place: a certain Raymond Briggs.

Asda Great Deal

Free UK shipping. 15 day free returns.
Community Updates
*So you can easily identify outgoing links on our site, we've marked them with an "*" symbol. Links on our site are monetised, but this never affects which deals get posted. Find more info in our FAQs and About Us page.
New Comment