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Syd Matters’s Ghost Days
Songs born out of solitary confinement
Paris
24/01/2008 -
"It’s all so surreal! Totally exhibitionist!" says Jonathan Morali, obviously still not entirely comfortable with the attention focused on him on the release of each Syd Matters's album, particularly the latest, Ghost Days. The 27-year-old Parisian songwriter launched his career with A Whisper and A Sigh. But it was Syd Matters’s second album, the bizarrely-titled Someday We Will Foresee Obstacles, that generated a significant buzz on France’s indie scene with its hypnotic melancholy pop-rock tracks reminiscent of Radiohead, Pink Floyd and the late Nick Drake.
Ironically, one of the obstacles Morali failed to foresee was just how difficult the task of writing a follow-up to Syd Matters's second album would be. Faced with moments of angst and self-doubt, Morali decided to turn the spotlight on the creative process itself. Listeners are invited to imagine his "ghost days", the endless days he spent sitting alone in his room, letting childhood memories drift in and out of his consciousness as he floated in a sort of non-space, intensely present and intensely absent at the same time. "I composed these new songs primarily for myself," he says, "working in total confinement in my bedroom. I’m someone who naturally spends a lot of time on my own and Ghost Days is the result of that process. It’s also a sort of detailed account of those days when I cut myself off from the world and don’t need anybody around me."
Under these "ghostly" circumstances, Morali pushed writer’s block to the point where it became a form of inspiration. "Composing the material for Ghost Days was really, really tough," Morali admits, "It’s like the more songs you write, the more you want to push things forward and change things and that inevitably means questioning and doubting everything. This time round, I actually made a lot less demos that I did on the last two albums... I turned my lack of inspiration into a means of expression. Basically, I set out to explore what happens when there’s nothing much going on!"Solitary pleasures
The existential void runs like a subtext throughout Ghost Days as the singer imagines himself "dead and buried" in his room (Everything Else), has visions of himself attending a sort of phantom ball (on the mesmerising title track) and fondly remembers his night-time hiding place in the family kitchen (on the weird and wonderful Cloudflakes). Everything about the album, from Morali’s plaintive vocals to the blurry cover image of a centaur (a still from the work of video-maker Jason Glaser) reflects a strange secondary state where the borders between dream and consciousness are blurred. But Morali denies that the group ever set out to achieve such an overall aesthetic. "Ghost Days was never intended to be a concept album," he says, "Nothing was ever clearly thought out in advance."
Paradoxically, for such an introspective work, the recording of Ghost Days actually turned out to be a thoroughly collaborative process involving the whole group. "This was the first time that the entire band was really invested in the project," Morali acknowledges, "And that’s why I tried to keep the demos as simple as possible this time round, to leave room for the other musicians' arrangements. The group sort of took the ball and ran with it - they pushed things much further than I could have on my own!"
The song Me and My Horses is a prime example of a track where Morali and his musicians find the perfect osmosis. What starts out as a classic enough folk song ends in a glorious freestyle cacophony of hand claps, dissonant strings and a mix of the most weird and wonderful instruments. "I think there’s something almost magical about the song," says Morali, "Olivier [Ed.: Olivier Marguerit, the group’s guitarist] turned up with this composition for strings which he wrote I don’t know when and we got a friend of ours to come along and record the 'ondes Martenot'* in just two takes… That’s the kind of spontaneity I’m always looking for in music. I love it when something just sparks between the musicians without it being controlled in any way. "
Looking abroad
Morali’s musicians have certainly acquired precious complicity in the numerous concerts they have played to date, mostly in France, but increasingly in the U.K and the U.S. as well. Indeed, it’s fair to say that Syd Matters’s music, essentially inspired by British and American indie sounds, appears to be bursting to move beyond national borders. Morali admits that he "belongs to a generation where we've always been told that there's no place for songs in English on the French scene. So one of the escape routes that presented itself to us was obviously the export market… And let me just add that I’m totally fed up with the idea that singing in another language is a form of betrayal!"
The quality of the production on Ghost Days (unheard of from a group on the French indie scene) and the ambitious force of the songwriting make this an album perfectly tailored for the international market - where English-singing songwriters from France have failed to make any significant inroads to date! Boosted by their new label, Because (one of the rare companies in the record industry currently enjoying exponential growth), Syd Matters are now in a prime position to set their sights abroad. "It’s true that working with Because has given us the chance to export our music," Jonathan acknowledges, "But I’m not very comfortable with the term ‘ambition.’ All we’re trying to do as a group is reach the largest number of people possible whether that’s at home in France or anywhere else in the world." Ghost Days could well be the album that expands Syd Matters's fanbase - and reaches where other French albums have failed to reach in the past!
Syd Matters Ghost Days (Because) 2008
Syd Matters are currently on tour in France. Concerts in Paris - 12, 13 & 14 February 2008 at le Café de la Danse.
Jérôme Pichon
Translation : Julie Street
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