A Conversation with Matt Nathanson – HuffPost 5.20.11

Mike Ragogna: Hi, Matt.

Matt Nathanson: Hello.

MR: You were a blast at SXSW (South By Southwest), let’s just get that out of the way.

MN: Oh man, that was a fun time. I was starting to see imaginary elephants and stuff by that time. We did like three shows a day and I was starting to trip.

MR: I was going to ask you about that–sir, it was like you were SXSW.

MN: Dude, I felt a little bit like an overworked prostitute but in the best possible way.

MR: (laughs) And your riffing on all that was Black Swan is absolutely priceless. Would you please revisit that for our readers?

MN: Oh man, what did I say? I was not a big fan of Black Swan–I kind of felt like it was late night Cinemax with Natalie Portman.

MR: (laughs) Okay, your new album is Modern Love, and with all the topics on here, I would say I’m with you. You actually unite all the music under the flag of Modern Love.

MN: Everybody in my life–like all my friends–were going through these relationship upheavals around the time I was writing these songs. So, I was getting all of this information coming in and I was obviously interpreting it through my own filter. But the songs are all kind of about the way that love exists now, in the time of everything moving at hyper-speed, you know what I mean…in a land where people can be best friends on Twitter and never have met?

MR: Oh, Modern Love, you rascal you.

MN: Yeah, the record is about love, and how that volatile, emotional, human, great, amazing, collision that is love between people exists now, in a time where things move so fast.

MR: Speaking of the concept, Modern Love’s first track is appropriately titled, “Faster.” It has a little bit of a “Not Fade Away” beat going on.

MN: Oh yeah, I bring a little Bo Diddley into the times. It’s happened before–George Michael did it, and now, it’s time to bring it back.

MR: That’s a good lead into finding out who influenced you.

MN: You mean as a kid or for this record?

MR: Musically, in general.

MN: When I was a kid, I was hugely into hair metal, and I still am to an extent. But when I was a kid, I grew up outside Boston, so for me, it was like Van Halen, Def Leppard, Aerosmith, Iron Maiden, and that kind of stuff. So, that’s how I started. I think the first band I ever fell in love with was KISS. Then, U2 came along and sort of bridged the gap for me between the stuff that was hair metal and the stuff that can sort of go down with less pyrotechnics. There is great songwriting in hair metal, I just think it’s fantastic. But for me, U2 kind of came along with all the bombast and greatness of those bands, but kind of segued me into Dylan, Lou Reed, and that kind of stuff.

MR: In the song “Modern Love,” the girl basically says she’s used to liars. But to me, it’s like she just wants to get that portion of her life over with. How far off am I?

MN: “Modern Love” is sort of about this girl I knew who just couldn’t get together with anyone besides these douche-y men, you know what I mean?

MR: Oh, yeah. The characters that are on this album are really well fleshed out, and it’s not like you’re doing Harry Chapin narratives, but you are doing enough of a descriptive narrative that listeners can relate to them personally. Take “Room At The End Of The World” for example. Who hasn’t felt like retreating in that way?

MN: For me, this was the first record where not every song was like a diary entry. I’ve made a bunch of records, and all of them sort of felt like letters from me to certain people. This record was the first time I could digest and interpret other people’s stories and my own. It’s sort of freeing to not feel like you have to write about yourself or that you can write about yourself through other people. It felt like a lot less of a confessional record, even though it’s just as confessional. It just felt kind of cool to be able to tell these people’s stories.

MR: My favorite line of the album is, “I let go of love once it finally had me figured out.” What a great line.

MN: Thanks, man. Yeah, lyrics to me are kind of the thing that I take the most pride in, and are the thing that I sort of labor over the most because to me, lyrics make a song. If there is an amazing song with terrible lyrics, I can’t hang with it. For me, it’s all about communicating on the level of the voice, the music, and all that stuff, but lyrics always kind of blow my mind. That’s one of my favorite lyrics too, actually. They go through little changes too, over the course of the process, where it will be like I have ten different versions of that same line with one word changed every time–I’m kind of that type of writer.
MR: You were also able to slip in a line about Sinatra, thank you.

MN: Oh, Frank.

MR: Every guy still wants to be Sinatra, right?

MN: Other than the whole misogynistic part of Frank, everybody wants that suaveness. He sings, and it just destroys you. Elvis had a similar way about him, but if you want, you can deflect Elvis, and sort of keep it at bay. With Sinatra, it’s just impossible–his voice just had a sadness in it and a power in it. It changes over the course of his career too, to where you get a certain type of Sinatra and then he sings the same song and you’ll get a very different song, but it all has this vulnerability to it.

MR: And if there are different levels of cockiness, there it all was in his voice.

MN: It’s totally true. I wish that I had been able to be a bigger fan when he was alive–I came to him later. He’s impossible to deny. That voice.

MR: Speaking of voices, you’ve got this sort of Bono-esque thing going on, but you’ve also got some of John Mayer’s “Ooh, ooh,” like on “Clarity,” but you know what? They’re not worthy to carry your microphone, sir.

MN: Now, Bono I can see, but John Mayer, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen in me. U2 is one of my favorite bands of all time, so I feel like every record I make, I try to either makeUnforgettable Fire, Joshua Tree, or Achtung Baby.

MR: Nice. Which one would this album be?

MN: I don’t know, it’s got a little more of Achtung Baby than not.

MR: Back to the songs, another one of my favorite lines is from “Kiss Quick”: “Stop talking…put your back into it.”

MN: I like that song a lot. I was trying to portray a certain type of person, and I feel like the song did it. The way that the song moves, the way that the song unfolds, the way the vocals are delivered, and the way that the lyrics are–I feel like that was a real turning point for the record. We recorded a bunch of songs before that song, and then sort of did battle with that song–pulling parts out, re-recording different parts, and kind of struggling with it. When it finally started to turn the corner, I remember we took the drums off and we put a loop on. We had Jason McGerr, drummer from Death Cab, play drums for us on most of the record. I was sort of explaining to him, after I was frustrated, “You know, we recorded this and spent all day tracking this version, but I’m hearing this loop.” I was kind of explaining that to him, and then he went and laid down another track on top of it, and then laid down percussion on top of that. All of a sudden, the whole song shifted, and that was when the record kind of…it was like, “Yes, that is the way we should do this. This is it. It should sound like the future in the way that those great Tears For Fears records still sound like the future.” I wanted my record to do what those records did to me, and that was what “Kiss Quick” did. All of a sudden, it was like I was watching Blade Runner or something–it was just this great moment. Then, the producer and I…immediately, the ship turned, and all sails pointed to this idea. So, “Kiss Quick” is a very pivotal song.

MR: Everybody is used to loops by now, but I’m not sure people are aware they’ve become cornerstones in many of our favorite records of the last few years. To me, grooves add that potentially missing layer of “feel” to what could otherwise come off as a book reading, especially with lyric-focused recordings.

MN: Rhythm is so important, and the groove. Those great records from INXS, and The Pretenders–the groove on those records are just solid. It’s all about the vocal delivery and the groove, and everything else just kind of hangs. Everything else is like colors, but it’s really that the foundation is the groove, and then the vocal.

MR: Right, the delivery of the vocal being incredibly important. So, what inspired “Mercy.”

MN: That song kind of came out of my desire to write a song that melded Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and a guitar riff–I’d never written a song around a riff. It kind of came from the idea of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club meets Def Leppard. That chorus, to me, was total “Armageddon It,” and that was kind of how we wrote it. I’d never had songs where they were propelled by a guitar riff, and there are a couple on this record. I feel like that was the beginning of this thing. Maybe my next album will be made entirely of riffs.

MR: And, of course, there will always be metal lurking in there somewhere.

MN: Oh, yeah.

MR: By the way, I can so relate to some of the lines in “Mercy” because I get ridiculous too.

MN: Oh my God, “I get ridiculous” is the best line from this whole interview–that’s like its own song. That song was the most singer-songwriter-ish. The image is the idea of how you’re getting ready to run into a burning building and someone is sort of yelling to you, “Don’t do it, the building is on fire,” and you’re like, “Yeah, but it’s really cold out here, and it’s warm in there.” They’re like, “No, don’t do it, the building is on fire.” Then, as you’re burning up you’re like, “Oh my God, if I could only have kept my wits about me and kept my hands to myself, I wouldn’t be in this situation of sort of burning down my life.”

MR: In my life, that’s what I call a Tuesday. Why do we do that?

MN: It’s passion. Passion and stupidity–it’s like a lethal cocktail of the two.

MR: Plus the pair makes for an amazingly driving force.

MN: When that trigger gets fingered, it’s the kind of thing where you’ll move mountains for it and you’ll throw anybody under the bus for that feeling until you get a handle on yourself.

MR: I’m there. By the way, I love the honesty of “Run” with its “I want to watch you undress” admission.

MN: Dude, it’s funny, my business manager’s wife sent me an email that said, “I love this record, but I have to tell you that I take umbrage with “I want to watch you undress. I feel like it’s a little too direct and you could have been more subtle.” I told her, “I appreciate what you’re saying, but sometimes, you just have to straight up tell someone that you want to watch them undress.

MR: Randy Newman was not shy about saying, “You Can Leave Your Hat On,” you know? (Note: My interview with Randy Newman will be posting next week.)

MN: Dude, Randy Newman is rarely shy. He’s been called many things, but not shy.

MR: (laughs) Matt, what is your advice for new artists?

MN: My favorite thing is this idea that I’m realizing that as I progress through my career, I wish somebody had said to me its all about listening to people’s advice but not taking it as gospel. Art and your expression of art–everybody tries to pretend they know better than you, but really, you know better than anybody. So, I think I spent most of my career trying to find my center, while spending a lot of time being knocked off my center by people being like, “You need to be like this.” In my pursuit of pleasing people, I think I went astray in the way I made records. There is a certain kind of confidence that only comes with time spent, which is kind of cruel because if you had it at the beginning, you could do wonderful things with your first records. Sometimes, people luck into doing amazing things with their first records, but for me it was kind of like nobody knows you better than you know you, and you’re sort of your best friend. So, the more you trust yourself artistically and in decisions that you make, the better off you’ll be. You’ll at least feel that wherever you end up, you got there yourself. It’s a little hippy, but it really is fundamental because in this industry, everybody wants to tell you who you should be.

MR: You have an interesting career because you not only had your top ten hit with “Come On Get Higher,” but we can consider you as having major hits just from the sheer amount of shows that your material has appeared on. Actually, I think you may be one of the most musically exposed artists on television.

MN: It’s fun. It’s always fun to see your songs played against somebody else’s drama, and then it kind of blows open your songs in a cool way that you didn’t really expect.

MR: How did you react to “Come On Get Higher,” when that became a hit?

MN: It was a pretty nice feeling. Truthfully, I’ve probably only heard it about eight times on the radio over the course of my life, so for me it was just one of those things that people kept telling me about. People would be like, “It’s going great. The radio is really playing this,” and I’d be like, “That’s great, but I don’t hear it.” Then, I remember we did a summer concert in Des Moines, Iowa, and people had always sung along to songs, but we played “Come On Get Higher” at that show, and this entire lawn of people at this huge, outdoor show erupted and sang along. That was a moment when I was like, “Whoa, so this is what it feels like.”

MR: And when you heard it on the radio the first time?

MN: That’s always a trip. The first time you hear it, you get self-conscious and start pulling it apart, but the second time you hear it, you enjoy it. The first time you’re like, “Oh, what’s happening with my voice? We shouldn’t have done that bass line.” Then, all of a sudden, the second time you hear it you’re like, “Oh yeah, this is right on.”

MR: Nice. By the way, you’re talking to Iowa–Fairfield, Iowa–right now.

MN: (laughs) Oh, are you in Iowa?

MR: Matt, thanks a lot for taking the time to talk to me again. It’s been a lot of fun keeping up with your albums.

MN: Oh man, thanks for having me. This has been great.

Transcribed by Ryan Gaffney