Singer songwriter Matt Maltese has released his sixth studio album ‘Hers’ via The Orchard on May 16. The album arrives as Maltese’s most insular and intimate project to date, and his first fully self-produced effort since his second album ‘Krystal’.
Maltese has long drawn from the tried and tested artistic wellspring of romance and heartbreak, but the songs that make up ‘Hers’ find him reflecting upon a serious long-term relationship and the more grown-up complexities of love through the rearview, with the quiet artfulness for which he has become so beloved. ‘Hers’ exists in a twilight world, pairing heartfelt songwriting and dry witticism with the gentle quiver of strings, a flourish of woodwind or the sound of a creaking old piano.
“I’ve written a lot of music that comes from a place of infatuation, but this record was written on reflection of a much longer-term love. The complications and wonderful roads that that goes through and the more informed heartaches that come out of it. I got to really reflect and slave over it… It’s a bit like having a year to write a really important email,” he says.
“I’m British enough to feel a slight shame of writing so many love songs in the past,” he adds. “Maybe the more interesting thing on paper would have been to go to the other side of the world and write a concept album about prehistoric creatures or something, but at the end of the day, we’re all human, and love and people are things we’re all continually affected by. It’s my job as a songwriter to excavate the things in my life, and that’s what I was going through.”
Alongside the album release is the record’s latest single “Happy Birthday”, a mediation on all the feelings that can be held in such a simple exchange between two people. Maltese explains: “I grew up when writing ‘happy birthday’ 108 times a year on people’s Facebook pages without any punctuation was socially acceptable behaviour, and I’ve always thought how interesting it is looking back.. such a plain message but always so much unsaid between senders and recipients in those two words.
The socially conventional shell for a million other feelings. And I think in break ups, the ‘happy birthday’ text is the last thing to go. Sometimes it goes on years longer than anything else, and that’s fascinating, I think. Reflecting on this, it started to really interest me to get that into a song. A light title, but all the anguish underneath the surface. Maybe someday, people all over the world will joyfully chant ‘I’d break my legs in half..’ when the cake comes out. Or not.”
‘Hers’ Tracklisting
1. Arthouse Cinema
2. Buses Replace Trains
3. Happy Birthday
4. Anytime, Anyplace, Anyhow
5. Always Some MF
6. Cure For Emptiness
7. Holiday From Yourself
8. Pined For You My Whole Life
9. Eternal Darkness Of The Spotless Mind
10. Tangled
11. Everybody’s Just As Crazy As Me
