Maybe once in a generation, the stars align: barriers crumble and the pop lamb lies down with the indie rock jackal. Kylie Minogue and Nick Cave. Miley Cyrus and The Flaming Lips. And now, Louis Tomlinson and Pete (now Peter) Doherty: united not on record, but to co-release the debut album by 23-year-old Andrew Cushin, a little-known Newcastle troubadour with a gift for mesmerising superstars – from all walks, evidently.
There’s no other explanation for a story that reads like A Star is Born meets Pygmalion, with a dash of The Karate Kid – on a hefty fried breakfast – thrown in. One whiff of Cushin’s early live footage and Noel Gallagher was producing his songs. A glimpse of him playing on Soccer AM and Tomlinson swept him away around the world on tour. Brief exposure to his onstage performance and Doherty was clamouring to release his debut album alongside Tomlinson, in what has become a hands-across-the-cultural-ocean collaboration. Forget “right place, right time”, Cushin is the right place and his time is clearly now.
