YÉ-YÉ! IT’S THE ROCK’N’ROLL POP ART OF MATTIEL!
“I’M AT HOME for the first time in a month,” says Mattiel Brown, from her flat in West Atlanta. However, it’s mid June and the 27-year-old singer-songwriter is soon off on tour again, playing dates throughout Europe to promote her second studio LP, the eclectic, witty, post-garage yé-yé powerpop delight that is Satis Factory.
As with her self-titled 2017 debut, Satis Factory was written and produced with Atlanta musicians/producers Randy Michael and Jonah Swilley. “I’d been reaching out to people in Atlanta to try and start something,” she explains, “but Atlanta was all hipster, droney synth stuff. I’d go to those shows and be confused: why was there was no rock’n’roll? Randy and Jonah were the only ones in town who weren’t ashamed of rock’n’roll.”
Mattiel Brown’s musical education came late, preceded by an interest in art. An only
child, with a mother who worked as a TV and movie set-designer, she was always encouraged to create. Music entered the picture when she was nine and discovered her grandmother’s record collection.
“I’d never seen an LP before,” she says. “There was Donovan’s Mellow Yellow, a bunch of Bob Dylan, The Monkees, The Beatles… but my own tastes? I remember finding a bunch of stuff on [early noughties P2P website] Limewire: The Clash, Black Flag, Patti Smith, Ramones, New York Dolls. I’d listen on the bus to school, block out the assholes.” However, Brown’s true epiphany was seeing White Stripes videos on VH1. “They stood out against everything else,” she says. “Musically, visually, the whole childish thing about them.”
Brown sat in her bedroom, learning all their songs, and then, aged 17, discovered the sound of her own singing voice. “My parents got me this 2002 Ford Focus,” she says. “I was driving to school every day and that was the only place where no one could hear me. I couldn’t be embarrassed in front of anybody, working on it for years in private. It was something very personal.”
That sense of the private made public was ever-present on Mattiel’s debut – cryptic pop songs written in a private language and brought out into the light by Michael Swilley’s arrangements. “Intention changes when people are paying attention,” she says. “People started to pay attention and I felt the responsibility.”
One fan was Ben Blackwell at Third Man Records. “Ben wrote about the first album on his blog, then Jack [White] invited us to come and play his record store in Nashville. Four months later, he asked us to go on tour with them. He said I reminded him of Shocking Blue, which I liked.”
Until recently, Brown had a day job as a designer at an e-mail marketing service, but gave it up in March. “I was, like, OK, you’re finally doing this,” she says. “It was quite intimidating. Scary, because nothing is guaranteed. But this is who I am now.”
Andrew Male
“I’d go to those shows and be confused: why was there was no rock’n’roll? MATTIEL