“All of these songs, bar one or two, are all about particular people that I’ve come across over the last couple of years,” he says. “Really that’s why I called it Cast of Yesterday. I thought that summed it all up – the travelling solo, these songs about the characters I’d met along the way and the pieces of wisdom you find in them. There’s a line, ‘The real stars don’t hit, they ricochet’, which is about the people who come and go, who you forever put on this pedestal because you don’t get the chance to actually know them very well at all. They don’t stick around long enough for them to inevitably piss you off.”
He laughs, though there is a thorn of truth to the observation. Wheatley has had a wilder ride than most over the last decade, seesawing between Australia and the US, dipping his toes in music, acting and modelling. In recent years he took on the mantle of Crooked Saint, but with his debut album finally at hand – and lead single, Valerie, already winning over critics and fans alike – he’s now comfortable performing under his own name.
“I was in The Sparrows when I was fifteen, and we had five years together, signed by Sony,” he says. “We disbanded having already recorded the album, but still waiting for it to come out. We were sitting around, pointing fingers, trying to figure out where we’d gone wrong and why the record wasn’t on shelves yet. That drew me away, but I did a lot of growing up in that time. From there we started the band Rushcutter, but same thing happened. We recorded, did all the hard work, and then found ourselves sitting around waiting for this album to come out. Once again we started pointing fingers at each other, no one could figure out what was going wrong. I pulled out. I thought I’d crossed the finish line twice by getting these albums recorded, but nothing happened. I was still standing there, almost 30 years old and record-less. I was thinking, ‘Well, is this the right thing for me to be doing, then?’ I was quite disheartened. But from there Crooked Saint started. I started touring it, which eventually led to where I am now. But it all made me realise that sometimes, good things can just take a while.”
As pupal stages go, it has been a long and bumpy development, but Wheatley can be proud he’s produced damn strong because of it. From Valerie – which recounts Melbourne history with the troubled story of the Darrell Lea matriarch – to title track, the album is a carousel of rich narratives and evocative lyrics.
“I can’t wait for it to get out and more people to hear it. I’ve been carrying it around with me for two years now, since we first went into the studio to get things started. That said, there are a couple of songs here that are even older than that. So it feels like I’ve been carrying this around the world on a hard-drive for far too long now, and I can’t wait for it to be out. It means I can spread my wings and start writing again.”
BY ADAM NORRIS
