ON HIS OWN
Multi-instrumentalist Charles Moothart touring solo as CFM
Thinking about touring makes Charles Moothart’s head hurt. But he has a couple of days to rest before his tour starts. Moothart is a multi-instrumentalist and a singer and songwriter.
Previously, he has collaborated with Ty Segall and Mikal Cronin. And he’s the drummer for Segall’s Freedom Band.
Moothart’s latest project is known as CFM.
In March, he released the album “Dichotomy Desaturated (In the Red).”
“I worked on the album for about a year,” he says. “The songs just began to take place in time.”
The album is Moothart’s second solo effort, and he says it’s a swirling collection of songs that captures a variety of sonic moods — raucous, pastoral and pensive — while retaining an indelible melodic punch.
Moothart was raised in Laguna Beach, Calif., and first picked up the guitar at 12.
By 16, he had taken up drums. Since then, the 27-year-old journeyman has become a fixture in the West Coast psychedelic rock community; he’s logged oodles of studio and stage time with Cronin and Segall — both in his solo albums and as part of the aforementioned, ultraheavy supergroup Fuzz, the latter experience driving him to make music on his own.
“Dichotomy Desaturated” marks the first time Moothart’s written songs for the specific purpose of compiling them onto an album.
“There’s a lot of stuff on this record
that’s extremely out of my comfort zone, but that’s what I’ve come to enjoy in music,” Moothart says. “The whole record is a constant push and pull where I’m at with my life and with music — coming to terms with the fact that all I want to do is push myself, but it becomes scary.”
That push and pull — which extends to changes in Moothart’s personal life, including a move to Los Angeles from Laguna Beach — is reflected in the changing dynamics of the album.
“I try to write every day,” he says. “The album reflects all the change that was going on in my life. Even while I worked on the songs, I would change it up before it was a complete song.”