Matt Holubowski took the time he needed to make Like Flowers on a Molten Lawn, the fourth album – more experimental – released with spring, the season that inspired all creation.
Posted at 9:00 am
Anyone who thought the melancholic singer-songwriter from Montreal was more of an autumn type was right. “It’s always been my favorite time of year. I found it more poetic because everything dies in the fall and it reminds us that life is precious. »
But “something happened” and the idea of spring, flowers and the cycle of the seasons is omnipresent in this album, inspired by a lyric by American poet EE Cummings, Spring Is Like a Maybe Hand.
“I’ve talked about it, I’ve thought about it constantly. In this poem it is as if we are watching a spring formation. You see how it sits down, like a painter throwing paint, watching and waiting. I’ve wanted to create this way for a long time and take things slowly. »
Matt Holubowski welcomed us, by coincidence, to his Mile End studio on that first day of spring, crammed full of instruments after a day of rehearsals with his musicians. There we caught up with the talkative singer for the release of his previous album, the very beautiful Weird Ones, in February 2020. A few weeks later everything was closed – it was even him who had given one of the last big shows in Montreal, March 4th in MTelus.
The tour planned at the time never went as expected. But while it speaks of rebirth and apocalypse, Matt Holubowski clarifies that Like Flowers on a Molten Lawn is not an album inspired by the pandemic. Rather, what she brought him was “the luxury of time” to learn and create without obligation.
Not having a future, not being able to make a plan, it took me 10 years back when I was in college and studying just to study.
Matt Holubowski
Synthesizers, software and recording techniques of all kinds have become an obsession for the musician. He even says he spent two weeks following a tutorial on how to operate a 1970’s echo machine!
“I was always afraid to enter this world because it is so infinite. But I came home and it was like I would never run out of toys, like I would never see the end of them. »
Which makes him particularly happy. Would Like Flowers on a Molten Lawn be a geek album? He smiles contentedly. “Such! I could tell you ad nauseam. It’s been a long time since I was so excited about something,” says Matt Holubowski, who admits he could be “stuck with pegs and wires” for the rest of his life.
In the end he was still writing songs and it was director Pietro Amato who helped him channel all this new assimilated technique. “Without Pietro, I think I would have made an album just out of sound effects! »
more creative
Matt Holubowski believes this whole process has made him “exponentially more creative” and given him a better understanding of his songs. So the album developed slowly, through trial and error and weeks of stays in chalets or studios with its musicians. “It took a year and a half. We filed, we discarded whole tones, we started anew. »
The result is a structured, rich, and fleeting album that juxtaposes drum machines and drums, mixes rock guitar and symphony orchestra, features French horn and koto, and in which he primarily plays keyboards. “I’m just playing a song on the guitar. It’s a conscious decision,” says the musician, who was introduced to the world of synthesizers.
“I was afraid of becoming a cliché of myself on the guitar. I felt like I wasn’t reinventing myself enough. Recognizing my limitations allowed me to focus on other aspects of my creativity. »
The goal in all of this: to look in the mirror with a “raw and honest look”, to put yourself in danger, not to rest on your laurels. He sings differently for the same reasons, not just relying on the “dynamics” of his voice.
I can sing very high, very low, very loud. But I wanted to leave room for melody and arrangement rather than playing the big impressive voice. Singing out loud doesn’t mean singing well. And singing well doesn’t mean singing a good song.
Matt Holubowski
It’s clear that Matt Holubowski doesn’t like going on autopilot. “That’s how I like to live. But even if this album is different and more experimental, he sees it as a continuation of his previous ones. And today the instrumental album excites him just as much as the desire to return to the acoustic guitar itches him like it did at the time of his first album “Old Man”.
“What I realized through the process was accepting that I’m not trapped in a style cage,” says the singer, who is set to tour again and hopes his album can grow into a show. And if he’s still vacillating between spring cheer and autumn sadness, he awaits the sequel, knowing that a music career is full of disappointments far more than successes.
“We’ll talk about it in a year when I still want to be a spring guy. »
indie folk
Like flowers on a melted lawn
Matt Holubowski
audiogram