The usual mileage of an album is a year, 18 months tops. That’ll garner you about three singles, maybe one ballad, a tour and plenty of appearances and signings in between.
But if you’re really lucky one album can carry you through this cycle in one country and then, as the album reaches its ‘end’ in that region, it can take on a whole new life in a whole other part of the world. Matt Nathanson has produced such an album.
Admittedly it’s his sixth studio album, but Nathanson has struck gold with the release of his latest effort hitting Australia and growing a whole new pair of legs. Originally recorded in 2007, Some Mad Hope is still as fresh as it was back then… not bad for an album that took two and half years to write!
‘Five years worth of work!’ Nathanson clarified over a latte at Leederville’s chic new Cranked Café, here in WA recently for One Movement. ‘It’s the longest amount of time spent promoting a record and the longest amount of time spent recording a record in all six records.
‘And what’s really cool about it is, truth be told, I kind of feel like albums deserve maybe not this gratuitous a time period, but I feel like albums really do deserve the proper time to be made, the proper time to be written and recorded, the proper time to be promoted and played.
‘I really come from this school of “Records shouldn’t be turned aroundâ€; I always get suspicious about bands who put a record out really quick. To me it’s sort of like, records should be laboured over – not in a way that’s detrimental to them, but in a way that they deserve respect.’
What makes Nathanson’s work so good are the lyrics. On the surface he could easily pass as just another singer slash songwriter… but he isn’t. He’s actually an incredibly talented lyricist, and Some Mad Hope is the proof of that.
Lead single Car Crash is electric and infectious, a song that instantly comes to life. In Heartbreak World he croons about how ‘we’ll leave memories for auctioneers’ while elsewhere and flecks of inspiration colour songs like To The Beat Of Our Noisy Heart.
But it’s in the song Still that Nathanson suddenly bursts into a whole new stratosphere, the song a potent languid love ballad fuelled with undertones of memories and sex… and then sex… and then more sex. Naturally, its Nathanson’s personal highlight.
‘It’s my favourite song on the record for sure, it’s the most fun to play out of any of them, and I feel like it’s the sexiest song too. There was this real thing that happened on first bunch of records where it was a very black and white concept; it was like here’s the loud song, here’s the soft song, here’s the loud song.
‘And on this record, we got to a turning point where my friend Jason, who plays drums for Death Cab For Cutie, and he came in and play drums, and all of a sudden the track took on this depth of sexuality or different varying degrees of colour. It was like the shades came into play.
‘The lyrics got refined after the track had been recorded, and it was just this idea of sensuality and this idea of locking yourself in a hotel room with somebody. And losing that, because it’s about longing for it, but it’s fun to get that.
‘Writing is to indulge that part of yourself that you don’t get to indulge or that you indulge with someone in a private way; it’s almost like showboating sensuality, you know? It’s pretty fucking rad,’ Nathanson concluded, ‘because you wouldn’t necessarily be that person at the coffee shop, you know what I mean? It’s nice to be able to dig into that role, and for me it comes to memory, in the idea of remembering the experience.’
Some Mad Hope is available now through EMI.
Scott-Patrick Mitchell
