Alex Clare hasn’t gotten sick of hearing “Too Close” on the radio.
“It’s awesome that it’s being played constantly. Every time I turn on my radio, it’s there!” says the British singer/songwriter.
Though he’s still riding the success of his breakthrough album, “The Lateness of The Hour,” Clare tells Billboard that he has begun to piece together his next record.
“We started album two a couple of weeks ago. We started the writing process in earnest so hopefully by next June, we should have a new record out,” he says, adding that the idea of having a new album out next summer is “pretty exciting although slightly daunting and terrifying.”
Clare told Billboard that his dream is to have a lot more live instrumentation on his future release.
“My intention is to have more of a live orchestration and strings. When I wrote most of the songs, I had that in mind,” he says. “Hopefully I’ll be able to realize that with the next record — get a little bit more useful dynamic on that.”
While he isn’t revealing any collaboration plans for album two, Clare says that there may be a few in the works.
“I don’t want to give them the kiss of death and say this is definitely happening because you just never know. The priority at the moment is getting the songs and production to a place that I’m happy with and then we’ll think about the collaboration side of things,” Clare says.
His current focus is putting together basic demos of his new material — some of which he’s hoping will end up on the album.
“When you write a song and you put it down, you try and get the recording as good as possible and sometimes you hit the nail on the head and the demo recording actually ends up becoming the record,” he says.
He plans to head into the studio to begin “serious recording and production” in March and will finish the album within several months.
“I did ‘The Lateness of The Hour’ in about 10 weeks. I think the reality is that it shouldn’t take more than that. If you’re really struggling with the song and it takes you more than three weeks to write and produce, then it’s probably just not worth it and you should go back to the drawing board and start again,” he jokes.
Clare isn’t sure if his next album will contain a hit comparable to “Too Close,” adding that he doesn’t approach the writing process like that.
“I think the priority has to be on making nice songs and songs that feel good. Once you have good songs, then hopefully everyone else will agree and then they will take off,” he says.
Clare is gearing up to release “Up All Night,” which will be the next single off his current album. Beyond that, he’s pushing for “I Won’t Let You Down” to go to radio.
“I’d like that song to get out there because I love the big emotional connection to it,” he says.