Portrait of an artist

"I feel as though I've found an aesthetic that I'm comfortable with and feels very much mine," the 41-year old musician and artist tells me with an air of triumph. Moulding himself to embrace this, has, however, been a process.

Change has always been at the forefront of Weeks' life. It was there when he first met his former Maccabees bandmates who turned him onto songwriting; it was there when he enrolled at university in Brighton to study Illustration; and it was there when Maccabees finally hung up their boots after a decade together. Most recently, it was there when he moved to Lisbon with his partner and son and set up his creative workspace in an empty loja - the Portuguese word for shop. This is where his latest project gets its visual through-line and its title.

"There's something about change that gives you something else too," he muses. "You get a new song out of that guitar because you've never picked it up before. I think there's a bit of that, I'm in a new place with new things and new atmospheres and all of the visuals, all of those prints are so specifically snapshots and postcards of moments that are entirely, to my mind, local to where we are. That, and the way that those have then informed lyrics and stuff on LOJA...from a lyrical point of view, and from a visual aspect, it is entirely informed by location and the newness of surroundings and the leaving behind of an old set of structures."

In heading to Lisbon, and opening himself up to the inspiration for what would become LOJA, Weeks was also able to recognise himself once again. Having spent his life in London, the change of scenery offered him a chance to experience a fly-on-the-wall anonymity. Walking the streets, the walls and surroundings reflected no memories or routines, and instead, allowed him a chance to simply exist in the most basic form. "You're just there," he explains. "And I like that a lot. I like how invisible I can be."

Given his reflective nature, Weeks is an earnest type. He speaks with a considered cadence, often pausing to choose his next musing - even when it comes to pondering himself. "Saying that I'm an in-the-moment person is not right," he chuckles. "I'm kind of a cosseted....kind of a small-room-wherever-I-am type of person... a garden shed person! I'll shut myself away wherever I am, and I'll come out and try and be a bit of sponge and then go back to it, but my partner is a forever forward-looking person, and I'm on her coattails."

Weeks basks in the glow of his loja with the Portuguese sun streaming in – and the plain white wall behind him juxtaposes the colourful trails of thoughts that unspool – as we discuss his journey so far and one the most important moments for him recently. Back in June, the word of LOJA was brought to life over four nights at the Copeland Gallery in London, playing a set surrounded by his paintings. Weeks is still ruminating on what a live show in this new world of his looks like – a place where he'd tour galleries, being able to bring his art into the fold as part of the experience. "I don't want it to be naff, it's the balance of not naff, but not shortchanging people," he tells me. "What I like about gigs is that they aren't over complicated, or that they aren't trying. They aren't sort of overstepping themselves. It's tricky. I remember when I'd go and see bands like British Sea Power, and they would dress the stage, and it would look amazing but it was not a complicated job. So it's trying to find the simplest but most effective way of setting the scene, and that's easier said than done."

His biggest issue is the venue. While the London show came together to match his vision, trying to branch out LOJA's visual components elsewhere has proven difficult. "Finding other places in the UK or in Europe where I can put on similar events is surprisingly hard," he admits. "But it gave me a sense of what could be a potential template."

Galleries are the obvious venue. But having a clad of giggoers in a venue not made for such events creates a plethora of obvious issues, and Weeks is keen to stress that this visual and sonic meeting of LOJA isn't necessarily the path forward for all of his future endeavours. "I don't always think that the art that you're making needs to always be presented with the music," he says. "It just so happens that with LOJA that's kind of the point."

Mentioning American singer-songwriter Tim Presley, who also dabbles in painting and drawing in a similar vein, Weeks notes, "I think that's all really interesting...that doesn't mean that I need to always have his music on in the background when I'm enjoying that stuff. The same with Nick Cave, he's not making satanic porcelain on stage whilst preaching to his adoring fans. You know what I mean? There are ways of becoming both things at once without constantly trying to make it both things at once."

It's a compromise he's had to make before. During his Maccabees days, Weeks had to put his love for the visual arts on the backburner. While it may have been a logical step for him to take care of the band's artwork – which he did 2007 debut Colour It In – it would have meant an extra cog in the system. "It just made more sense, from a kind of diplomatic position, for me not to be trying to present my work always, because it wasn't part of our collective expression," he says. "It was my expression so that very much took a back seat, which is just part of being collaborative sometimes."

After the band split up in 2017, the gates were open for Weeks to follow that creative path once more. It was a choice that led to a new recurring theme in his life – confidence – and new found level of artistic productivity. 2017's The Gritterman was a richly illustrated children's book twinned with a companion album while his solo debut proper A Quickening and its follow-up Hop Up found their own calm and sophisticated relativity among curious and creative landscape.

"With anything, the initial moment, the something out of nothing moment, is so exciting that it can be a kind of a mirage," he says. "Because of its newness, you think that it has something very special." Waiting out this newness period is key to understanding what actually works for him and why this new era is one he’s still reckoning with: “I don't think I can achieve that confidence with visual stuff without living with it long enough to justify that initial fizz, right?"

But as they progressed, the rooms getting bigger and fuller of their own accord, that DIY outfit had to become a well-oiled machine. For Weeks, someone who struggles to deal with the on-off relationship of a live performance, this proved a problem. "Making the evening, the hour where you're playing the best that it can be helps temper the on-off-ness that you were talking about. With Maccabees, by the end, you needed the machine to work well, because that's what you're trying to achieve, in a way…actually what I've found is that I need to be involved throughout the day but, if you're in a bigger machine, it's quite hard not to just be a pain in the ass of someone much better at doing the job of setting up the stage than you are."

It was to such a degree that Weeks found in the Maccabees' latter days his anxiety was encouraged by it. "I used to get very intense stage fright towards the end that would come on during the gig. So my anxiety and the panic of the event would hit me halfway through a set, and by the end, I would be a mess like I couldn't process the adrenaline, or whatever it was, and I think part of that was that there was nothing the rest of the day where I was charting my progress to the event."

These days Weeks has a lot more calm to centre himself While there's more to do, unpack and figure out – it's how he likes it ("If it's your own project, you can justify being a pain in people's necks," he laughs). Confidence becomes him in this new chapter of his life. He specifically nods to his musicality. "I think it's a confidence to sit and play an hour of music in front of people where I'm playing keys the whole time, and having my first ever exhibition at that same moment, I don't think I would have had the…I don't know, yeah, confidence...it feels like a flabby word, really, but it's the self assuredness of, This work is good enough. I can play this well enough, and this music is good enough, and I am happy to present it all at once."

Weeks' early years were vastly different to those of his Maccabees bandmates. It's partially why a sound, sturdy inner framework is so key to the artist I talk to. While his bandmates "had the Dylans and the Van Morrisons and they had Old Grey Whistle Test DVDs. I certainly did not," he says. Spending time with them that allowed Weeks to accumulate knowledge to enable his confidence as a musician. "I had no real points of reference and I spent a huge amount of time with those boys, obviously," he recalls, "so being introduced to all those things, and Felix's enthusiasm and encouragement of everyone, and then the success of that band, meaning that my confidence in my writing grew, even though we wrote together, I learned an awful lot from the successes and failures of being part of that band, in terms of writing songs.

"I got to write with Felix, Hugo, Sam and Rupert for such a long time that it helped me understand that I could do it enough, and then when I was no longer with them, I had to back that up," he tells me. "I had to prove to myself that I could do it as just me or with working with Nick now that I casually hear that I did A Quickening with like and all the other people I've collaborated with, but I'm at the helm, and I need to make it happen."

Weeks is more confident within himself now but comparing himself to his peers is, and was, inevitable: "I have friends of mine that I feel like since I've known them since they were 13," he says. "Felix, for instance, I think has sort of been quite aware of who he is from the moment I met him when we were like 13 or 12 or whatever, right? Other friends of mine who I think are very secure, and have been forever, in who they are. And I don't think that I have that in the same way," he adds with a shrug.

Referring to it as a constant "chipping away" inside, Weeks' comfort levels with understanding his abilities has been a learning curve - he calls it a "slow honing" of understanding what his craft, ultimately is. "Like with the visual work, part of what that is.... is being aware that I'm comfortable with not being a good or a big stage presence. The more comfortable I am with that, the more of a pleasure doing it is, and also maybe my strength doesn't need to just lie in that maybe I can I cover some of the bases with putting more energy in and presentation into the visual things. And that's the sort of the tapestry.... that patchwork of what I am as someone that makes stuff and presents stuff to people."

Weeks' output so far has emboldened him, he says: "[A Quickening's] shapes and the way that they looked…I was so relieved when they happened and that they worked, and had all of the same sort of amorphous, non-specific, slightly abstracted, graininess, and then Hop Up was the answer to that record…it was trying to fill in the kind of lighter, more buoyant aspects of A Quickening."

These reactions after the fact differ from his new, conjoined process: "It's not that I have made this work specifically as an afterthought to the completion of the record. So I've been working on it constantly throughout the process of making, writing, recording the record, and I will continue making work in that style, I guess, or using similar practices. So in terms of where I am now, I think I would like to find a way of there being, perhaps a better balance between my visual and music making. But it's easier said than done!"

With LOJA still in his present – its physical release comes later this week following a digital drop earlier this year – and the grand execution of his vision for completion, Weeks is in good stead. "I think it's crystallising a bit, yeah," he sighs. "I really love making prints, and I would like to do more of that, and I'm going to continue trying to develop that process and that practice musically. I'm very proud of the work that I made, but I still really want to make a record that is less produced, and where the performance of it and the capturing of that performance is what makes the record special. And I haven't done that. I don't think we managed to do that with Maccabees, and I haven't done it as a solo person. I'm hoping that maybe the time and energy I put into getting better at playing keys is going to help with that because I think if I can just be a bit more self-contained then maybe that will inform the recording process, and give it a kind of an immediacy and a moment in time and place that exists in some records that I really love."