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| CERYS MATTHEWS (DON'T LOOK DOWN - ALBUM & TOUR) |
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| We are sorry but CERYS MATTHEWS
is not due to perform for a while. |
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Cerys released her first CD in two years in October 2009. The album, entitled Don't Look Down, was released in two versions, one in English and the other in Welsh (the title of the Welsh edition being Paid Edrych i Lawr). It was recorded in Providence, Rhode Island, Nashville, Seattle and London and coincided with a sell-out two week UK tour in October
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MORE ON CERYS
Cerys Matthews
The Telegraph - 11 Sept 2009
'I’m not looking for trouble, trouble always finds me/I recognise it coming and I don’t want to see it leave.” Delivered by anyone else, this lyric would sound like a drunken, maudlin, late-night sob of a line. But sung by Cerys Matthews, in her mellifluous Welsh lilt, over a gently waltzing melody on the song Into the Blue from her new album Don’t Look Down, it sounds like happy wisdom gleaned from a life filled with drama but little regret. “You have to take risks,” she says, “risking nothing is the saddest sin of all.”
Matthews is no stranger to risk. Shooting to fame at the tail-end of Brit pop as the gorgeous, gregarious lead singer with the megawatt voice of the indie band Catatonia, she became the original ladette stalked by the press, who revelled in her uninhibited partying and inevitable fall from grace.
After Catatonia split up in September 2001, Matthews – then the subject of tabloid speculation regarding her alcohol intake and mental health – relocated to Nashville where she seemed to find redemption in a quiet life of marriage, children and making gentle country music.
Yet six years later, a now divorced Matthews was back in the UK and once again in the full glare of public attention as one of the stars of reality television show I’m a Celebrity… Get Me out of here!. An apparent flirtation with a fellow contestant attracted controversy, compounded by her semi-naked appearance on the front of the News of the World when she got out of the jungle, trying to set the record straight.
But two years on, 40-year-old Matthews is enjoying another renaissance and this time, it seems, for all the right reasons. She was recently picked up by the BBC digital radio station 6 Music where she now presents a daily afternoon show.
Alongside that she has been fronting serious television documentaries on everything from Celtic poetry to the music of the Mississippi region of the United States and will this month release her third solo album, written in English and Welsh. “For the first time, people are trusting me to do things and I am proving I am perfectly capable of doing them,” she says. “I think you can give the impression when you have been in a rock band for 10 years that all you can do is make noise and drink until dawn. But I have a lot more interests than the clichés of rock and roll. That is what is different now. I’ve got my own production company. I’ve made this record myself: produced it, written it, recorded it. I felt it was time for some self-determination.”
Meeting Matthews in person – focused, softly spoken and with a buttercup blonde bob that makes her look like a wholesome Sharon Stone – it is hard to imagine her as a prototype Amy Winehouse. She says she remembers little about her hell-raising Catatonia days but is honest about her subsequent, ill-advised foray into reality television. “I did it out of contrariness and curiosity,” she says. “I watched a lot of those shows when I first had children [she has two: Glenys, now five; and Johnny, three] and was too exhausted to do anything else. So I was fascinated to know what it would be like to do one. And the money I made allowed me to make a donation to charity [Shelter in Wales] and set up my own production company.”
The move into radio this year was an equally unexpected opportunity, but one she has revelled in. Despite having no previous radio experience, after doing only a cover slot over Christmas, she was asked back repeatedly until being rewarded with a regular afternoon show. Apart from her perfect-for-radio, sing-song accent, that sounds innocent even when she is being indignant, what makes her stand out from the other identikit, blokey, indie-obsessed shows is her varied musical taste and original presenting style.
“I listen to a lot of radio and particularly a lot of Radio 4 and what I felt was missing from many music shows was content,” she says. “I don’t want to listen to inane babble. I love to learn facts or go on journeys to different countries through music.”
After so many diversions in her own life, many of them down dark avenues of self-destruction, Matthews, unexpectedly but delightedly pregnant with her third child (to boyfriend and manager Steve Abbott), glows with contentment. “I haven’t changed in 20 years but sometimes the rest of the world catches up with you,” she says. “Optimism has got me through. Every time I get into a new phase in life it gets brighter and there are more things to do. I have this never-ending thirst for knowledge, about how things work.”
Whether listening to the beautiful, atmospheric range on her new album, where she can slip from Astrud Gilberto to Rod Stewart in a single song, or to her infectious enthusiasm on radio, it feels like the formerly talked-about Matthews is finally speaking up for herself and it is hard not to be swept along by her passion for music and life.
“I don’t see much difference between performing as a singer and being on the radio,” she says. “It is creating an atmosphere between you and the audience. And a lot of that is about the silence between the songs because you share that silence. If you can make an audience come with you on a journey, if only for three minutes, it is an incredible feeling.”
www.bbc.co.uk/wales/music/sites/cerys-matthews
www.bbc.co.uk/6music/shows/cerys
... We asked 6 Music messageboard users to come up with some questions for Cerys - and then put a few to her...
How would you describe yourself?
Contrary, but generally very happy. Passionate about good/bad music and good/bad food. Chronically curious.
Who did you grow up listening to on the radio, and do you have a favourite DJ?
I love Johnny Walker and Steve Lamacq. Also NPR in the US and Radio 4 generally. Mike Reid and DLT were DJs when I was growing up but they were a little too mainstream for my tastes, especially as it was eighties production all the way at that point. I was more inclined towards Smokey Robinson, Bob Dylan, Sarah Vaughan, Motown stuff and The Faces...
I loved John Peel of course, because he could play anything. Not that I loved everything he played but the idea of no format, no rhyme, no reason still makes me insanely happy. I still can't fathom music having any boundaries.
Is there an instrument you wish you could play?
I love the sound of the French horn and timpani, and would love to play the oud... or kora, ukulele, harp (if it didn't hurt your fingers) just for a minute. I play a load of instruments already (badly in some cases) and guess I'm happy as long as you can write tunes with them. If I had a wish, I would be able to play all instruments so every mood is cared for.
I frequently play with a fellow from Knoxville called Mason Neely (we'll be touring together in October). He is crazily talented - not too much weedly weedly technical stuff for the sakes of it but brilliant and soulful playing - on drums, bass, guitar, banjo, mandolin (took him three hours on a tour bus to learn before playing live), piano and all sorts of percussion. That kind of musician makes me hopping mad (haha). To play everything well is so different from playing everything rather mediocrely.
What do you miss most about the UK when you're abroad?
Easy - the BBC, the sea and eccentricity. Otherwise not much because I love the adventure of being abroad, good weather (if applicable), brilliant food (Mexican, French, Spanish) and languages - I speak fluent Spanish and French, a little Italian and Catalan (as well as Welsh). And of course all the cultural differences in the way people handle themselves, plus the geological differences and the history you get to learn. And then the music!
Given the current trend for reforming bands, would you ever consider reforming Catatonia?
No, there's no need. I enjoy playing with musicians from America that I've played with for several years now, as well as my colleagues in London - Oroh, Rocco, Mike and Brad. I play new stuff on tour, as well as anything from Catatonia if I feel like it. I love juggling old and new and also covers of well known songs like 'Love Me Tender' or less well known songs like 'Weightless Again' or 'Statue Of A Fool'. I just love good songs - as a solo artist I have total freedom.
Are there any artists you'd like to duet with that you haven't already?
I'd love to have duetted with Otis Redding, Donnie Elbert, Judy Garland, Elvis and Johnny Thunders. Alive is more difficult, though I'm a fan of Rod Stewart's voice for sure. I was meant to sing with him in his Audience With..., but I got talking with the uber-talented and supremely lovely Caroline Aherne instead, so we never did sing together.
Who are your favourite solo artists/bands at the moment?
The Felice brothers. I’m keeping an eye out for Florence And The Machine and Alessi's Ark too.
How do you relax after a long week?
Great food, wine and company, a huge sofa, great vinyl records and a little space for dancing.
Do you have a favourite out of all the songs you've performed?
‘The Good In Goodbye’ off Cockahoop, and back from Catatonia days, ‘Do You Believe In Me’.
Do you have a favourite book?
Right now I’m reading Big Bangs by Howard Goodall - the story of five things that changed musical history. It's up there with my favourites. I just read The Catcher In The Rye, which is OK until it peters out 3/4 of the way through. I’d love to find time to read all those classics. Life can already be just too short but I’ll take it as it comes and love it
How do you feel about having your own radio show?
My own show on 6 Music? Woah... getting to play songs old and new in the company of a load of other music fans? It is the ultimate for me - apart from performing that is, but I guess they complement each other anyways.
And my favourite thing? The interaction with 6 Music listeners. That's before even mentioning the varied guests (Duncan Jones is my favourite so far, talking about his film 'Moon'), and live sessions in The Hub... the Kenyan Boys Choir and Hypnotic Brass Ensemble were both great. I come away at the end of each show just as excited as ever to start the following day. Finding ace songs and sharing them with people is just unbeatable - it never gets old. |
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