august 15, 2021 Newsletter that drops into the inboxes of any fans who have subscribed - those eagerly waiting, those who acknowledge it with a smile and those who forgot they even fuckin’ subscribed to this loser. Hi. I won’t tell you guys how long I agonised over the right word to start this with. Little secret: I never used to write these. I got my publicist to. She always knew what she wanted me to say anyway, so it just seemed like it would save us a lot of rewrites and headaches (title for my new album*) if she got to craft the words. I did other stuff. Built a different world. I agonised over how to start this anyway, getting back to my first point, because for so long I didn’t think there would be a ‘this’ to start. That different world I built came crumbling down and I slid down the face of t’Earth, hoping to drop off the end. That’s dramatic, I didn’t actually want to not exist anymore; I just wanted to exist differently. As we all know, some things I wanted went my way and some things I really wanted didn’t and so as we came to the end of that second album cycle I decided I needed space. A lot of it. So I moved here. Well, not literally here - that’s the pier at Cottesloe beach and there’s no houses on it - but Perth, Western Australia is now where I own real estate and I’m not giving it up to drop back into you guys’s inboxes. I’m sticking here for a little bit longer. It’s sunny, y’see, and fewer reminders of things. But I’m not sticking here forever, like I thought maybe I could when I first arrived on these shores. "You haven't even really been away, Nico, you stopped just before the pandemic and are back just after, WTF are you talking about?" You have a point, disembodied voice in my head who sounds like my niece even though she's never said that to me! I know, you guys will have no idea and subsequently this will just sound like indulgent nonsense. But I came close, so close, to just stopping. I didn't know how I would be able to feel okay about any of this again - the music, the touring, the standing on stage every night feeling like you're losing yourself with every chord. Turns out that it takes more to crumble a world than a goodbye. Sure, it feels like it’s crumbling at the time. It feels like you can’t breathe, speak, eat, possibly even think about the rest of your life just going on at the same pace as always. And yet! Here I am. Vastly different world - thanks to global events I have no control over and tiny personal shifts that I do - but the same amount of me in it. Or… maybe a little bit more, real soon. We’re nearing that time, folks. New things are on the horizon for anyone that calls themselves a Nico Sykes fan. There’ll be music and moonlight and heck, maybe you’ll even use it to find yourselves a little bit of love and romance. Good onya. Better you than me. With all that comes a new show. July 17, 2022 at Finsbury Park. The whole park will be ours. I’ll try and bring some of this Perth sunset. I’ll definitely bring some friends in the form of Blossoms and Holly Humberstone. And I’d appreciate it if you brought yourselves. It’s been a while. It feels like a whole new world we’ll be taking to the stage in. But I think we’ll all need it. If you’re getting this email, a presale code will be arriving on Wednesday. Use it wisely. Hope you and your loved ones are doing well. Let me know properly when I see ya. Ta very much, Nico *it’s not really.