Project turns into ‘Landslide’
New album beginning of a new journey for singer-songwriter Matt Simons
AMERICAN singer and songwriter Matt Simons, known for hits like Catch & Release and We Can Do Better, has a new album on the way, After The Landslide.
Simons shot to stardom after releasing Living Proof in 2012. He has since gone on to release two full-length albums globally, achieving chart success across Europe, South Africa, South America and the Caribbean.
Speaking from a cold Brooklyn in New York City, Simons said that After The Landslide was a project he started working on in 2017.
“I wrote the first two songs on the album back in January of 2017 and much later that year I went into the studio to start working on it so it has been about two years in the making,” he said.
Although he knew he wanted to release new music, putting together the album was an organic process.
“It’s been a while since my last album, which was in 2014, and although I released an EP in 2016 you just can’t compare the two. I just did not have a clear idea of what I wanted it to be when I first started writing but it became clearer as the writing process progressed that I wanted to go back to my singersongwriter roots and really take this album back to how it all started for me,” he said.
Simons said he wrote songs from his own experiences and those around him.
“It’s an album of renewal. We all go through challenges but we always manage to overcome them. This album is about the ups and downs. I want this album to feel like a hug when you listen to it,” he said.
“I chose After The Landslide as the title track because, for me, it encapsulates what the whole album is about. This record is about a quarter-life crisis. It’s about ‘blowing up your life’, starting over and all the cathartic yet terrifying things that go along with it. I wrote these songs at age 29 (in a much more settled place) but in order to do so, I had to dig deep into what I remember feeling in my early 20s.
“I didn’t have a lot of direction, I was just starting out in Brooklyn, fresh out of a big breakup and I had no idea what I was doing with my life.
“As scary as that was it also came with a lot of freedom. I tried to capture those feelings and experiences with this album.”
Simons said that After The Landslide was the beginning of a new journey for him. “I feel like I know what I am doing on this album and I always want to know what I am doing in my career, we all do.
“No day will be the same but going forward I have a clear vision of what I want to sing about and what I want my music to sound like.
“I want to be able to translate how I feel into my songs and I really want people to feel better when they listen to this album.
“It is not a happy-go-lucky album, there are some truths but the intention is to make people feel better,” he said.
After The Landslide releases on April 5.