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Cerys Matthews Turns Her Back On Pop Stardom
As shifts in artistic direction go, Cerys Matthews' evolution
from pop seductress to folk balladeer could be called seismic.
In her former incarnation with Welsh pop band Catatonia -
which hit the UK Top 10 with such near-novelty tunes as "Mulder
and Scully" and "I Am the Mob" - she cultivated a studied
bad-girl image, lifting her skirt for television cameras and cursing
on stage.
These days, she's relocated to the United States - honky-tonk capital
Nashville, no less - and has recorded a shimmering solo CD of traditional
and original folk tunes. Cockahoop offers 13 tracks of tasty
acoustic quirkiness overseen by producer Bucky Baxter, who
has played dobro and pedal steel guitar on albums by Steve Earle,
Ryan Adams and Bob Dylan.
It's certainly not Top 10 material - on either side of the Atlantic
- but Matthews says that's not the point. "I was just purely
selfish in making this stuff," she said in a recent interview
at the office of her U.S. label, Rough Trade, in the legendary Chelsea
Hotel. "I'd been in the studio working on stuff that was more
radio-oriented for a long time, and I wanted to just go out and make
a noise with beautiful sounds, old or new or both, and that's exactly
what I did."
A self-described "collector of songs," Matthews had stockpiled
more than 70 traditional folk tunes before and during her tenure in
Catatonia, many of them dating from the 15th and 16th centuries. She
presented them to Baxter last year as the two were preparing to start
work on the album.
He urged her to pen new material as a balance to the old, and the
result was seven original songs written or co-written by Matthews,
including the goofily tuneful "If You're Lookin' For Love"
and "Caught in the Middle," which boasts horns and a groovy
bass line.
"In a way I'd lost confidence, coming out of the band, as a
writer," she said. "But Bucky said, 'Come on. Not everybody
shares your passion for medieval tunes, so get working.' And I'm glad
he said that."
Even the new songs have a dark, aged flavor, achieved largely through
unorthodox instrumentation. "I love bass, and a lot of it. We
used bass harmonica, bass mandolin, oboe, bassoon, French horns. It
sounds beautiful to me, unusual sounds like that. And we tried to
stay away from using the guitar as a dynamic instrument," Matthews
said.
The album's title means festive or exulting, and it reflects
Matthews' sense of liberation while working on the project.
It was a hard-earned break for a woman whose scrappy rise to fame
and subsequent downfall -- she quit Catatonia in 2001 and checked
into rehab for drinking and bulimia -- were graphically documented
in the British tabloids.
After a period of introspection, Matthews said she felt pulled to
Nashville and moved there with her husband, music producer Seth
Riddle.
"I pretty much decided as soon as I got there that this was
a good climate -- music everywhere. We've got some of the greatest
players in the world there," she said.
Last year, she had a baby, Glenys Pearly Felin, who toddled
around the Rough Trade office during the interview flipping through
a stack of vinyl albums by Adam Green and The Fever.
"Oh, I don't know if she should be doing that," Matthews
muttered, and bustled over to pull her away. Out little Glenys went
to wait in the next room with Daddy.
Between motherhood and writing new material for her next CD, which
she said will be in the same vein as Cockahoop, Matthews doesn't
have much time for stardom. She said she'd be pleased if the album
finds the same modest success in this country as in Britain, where
positive word-of-mouth made it a low-key hit. Matthews said careful
listeners will notice that the album's lyrics form a kind of plot
arch, opening with a bawdy ode to "Chardonnay" and closing
with the sweetly resigned traditional ballad "All My Sorrows."
"When you're in the middle of (recording), you're just seeing
them as little songs. But with "Chardonnay" at the beginning
there's a storyline there, but then you're looking too much into it,"
she said with a laugh. "And I don't like to study like that."
-Justin Glanville
www.cerysmatthews.info
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