With her third solo album in production and an all-Welsh EP about to hit the shelves – not to mention the recent release of a charming duet with Aled Jones – it’s been all go lately for Cerys Matthews.
Add to that a move to the States, a marriage, two babies, a divorce and a move back to Wales (Cerys tells me she missed “the sea, walking and company”), and you’d expect the lady to be… well, frazzled, frankly. But read any of her recent interviews, watch her on telly or listen to her on the radio and you’ll notice a serenity in Cerys that’s as inspiring as it is unexpected.
News of Cerys’ divorce and return to Pembrokeshire is only just becoming public. At the time of my email to Cerys, there’s very little recent press on which to base my questions (even now, several weeks later, every article I’ve found rather annoyingly seems to focus on her personal life rather than her career), so the first thing I want to know is what she’s been up to.
“I’ve been selling up in Nashville,” she says, “moving back to Wales, looking after my two kids, recording a long player called Turn it on Slow and recording my first ever Welsh language only release called Awyren = Aeroplane on My Kung Fu, released this month, and singing with Aled Jones.”
A surprising collaboration, perhaps, but one that works well; the choice of song – Some Kind of Wonderful – is a little on the safe side, easy listening even, but it’s performed beautifully and Cerys’ voice is at its sweetest.
Cerys’ previous duets have included The Ballad of Tom Jones with Space and Baby it’s Cold Outside with Tom Jones. She also flew Gruff Rhys of Super Furry Animals over to Nashville to work with her on a couple of tracks from her second album, Never Said Goodbye. These collaborations have all worked extremely well, but which did Cerys most enjoy doing?
“Each coupling brings its own charm and difference,” she says. “I’d hate to say which I preferred, it would be immodest.”
Is there anyone she’d like to collaborate with in the future?
“I’d love to go into the studio with Michael Jackson just to see how he works,” she says, “or on the other hand Kanye West or Jay Z.”
Is there anyone in the history of music that she’d like to bring back from the grave to duet with?
“Donny Hathaway, singing A Song For You,” says Cerys. “He must have the most delicious voice and I would love to duet with him and give him a hug.”
Just before moving back to Wales, Cerys blogged regularly at her MySpace page about her journey along the Mississippi, where she was filming a documentary. What’s that all about?
“It’s for S4C,” she tells me. “It was amazing, I love travelling and learning about places and music.” The best part, she says, was singing with a New Orleans brass band at the Greenville Blues Festival and eating smoked turkey legs.
Cerys’ move to Tennessee was serendipitous; she tells me she went there to record her debut solo album, Cockahoop, and simply stayed. It wasn’t, she says, a conscious decision and although she’s been recently quoted as saying she felt like an immigrant while living in Nashville, it’s clear there were aspects of the place and the culture that impacted positively on Cerys. For one thing, Cockahoop sounds as if it couldn’t possibly have been recorded anywhere else.
That area of America has produced some incredible country and bluegrass artistes over the years, most notably (for me, anyway) Gillian Welch, Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton (particularly Little Sparrow), Gram Parsons – the list goes on. One imagines it would be easy to be influenced by these genres of music when living in the very region from which they sprung; yet Never Said Goodbye barely hinted at the country roots that were so obvious in Cockahoop. Was this deliberate?
“I never know how an album is going to sound,” Cerys explains. “I let it evolve. It surprises me sometimes. This time the new stuff is very seductive. I’m loving it.”
She’s right, of course. In another slight change of musical style, the songs on Cerys’ new EP, Awyren = Aeroplane, are indeed seductive and quite haunting, especially Y Corryn a’r Pry which, I tell her, is really beautiful and easily one of my favourite tracks from any artist this year. What were Cerys’ influences for this EP, and why release a Welsh-only record?
“I don’t listen to much music, only old stuff and R’n’B on the radio,” she replies. “I don’t know how it’s influenced. I just hear songs in my head. This time they are loungy and loving. I wanted to do it before I left America, for kicks.”
That Cerys Matthews is as talented a singer – if not more so – as during her years fronting Catatonia is unquestionable, but her choice to remain out of the spotlight these past few years and conduct her career from the back end of beyond makes me wonder if this means her ambitions are different than they were a decade ago.
“No different,” she insists. “I’m still obsessed with writing tunes and playing music, I just have to factor in my 2 kids, that’s all.”
I don’t mind admitting that Cerys has always been a heroine of mine, and not always for the right reasons. Ten years ago I thought she was fabulous when I saw her pissed at aftershow parties and in hotel lounges, shouting randomly at anyone who happened to pass by, but I’ve also met her at her quietest and sweetest; she once told me in a tiny whisper that being loud doesn’t make you less of a girl, while stressing in the same breath that women shouldn’t be ashamed of enjoying the housewifely arts, such as cooking and making quilts. That duality of ballsiness and vulnerability (as was also evident in Janis Joplin, incidentally the only other woman I’ve ever idolised) is a very endearing quality.
These days, however, the qualities in Cerys that I admire most of all are her humility, her resilience and her strength, whatever life throws at her. This is a woman who’s suffered pain, disappointment and immense pressure, yet has ridden out the storm and emerged stronger than ever. Cerys’ email oozes contentment and equanimity, even a sense of stability amidst the chaos of a move with two small children from one side of the Atlantic to the other. If there’s any stress or strain in her life, there’s no sign of it.
I have to ask, though: has Cerys really changed that much? Does any of the old Cerys remain? Ten years ago she was telling journalists she enjoyed gardening and listening to Radio 2. Is that still the case?
“I’m cruising through my thirties, loving it,” she says. “I love Radio 4 and American R‘n’B station 101.1 (I’ll miss it). I don’t garden so much though, love to keep a herb collection. I love meeting people, dancing African style, riding
thoroughbreds, singing and writing.”
And then comes the really telling statement: “I haven’t changed much, I just
have one more foot on the ground than I used to.”
Awyren = Aeroplane is released on My Kung Fu on 22 October. |
