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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