The journey the former Catatonia singer has taken on her first solo album may surprise some fans of the Welsh band she left in the summer of 2001, after almost ten years, four successful albums and a string of hit singles that included ‘Road Rage’ and ‘Mulder & Scully.’ Yet ‘Cockahoop’ represents the most abundant expression yet of her passionate approach to life and music, her instinctive feel for a great song and the emotional warmth of her unique voice.
Produced by acclaimed Bob Dylan and Ryan Adams steel guitarist, Bucky Baxter, ‘Cockahoop’ is the album that we always hoped that Cerys Matthews would one day make. "It was a departure from anything I'd done with Catatonia because we could treat every song differently and bring people in," she explains. "There was no pressure and it felt natural. I've been kicking against the modern way of recording for a long time. I wanted to hear every nuance of the instruments playing together and the rough edges, too. If you clean all that up, to me it becomes devoid of soul. I wanted to go back to making music in its purest form."
In order to do so, Cerys and her bulging portfolio of favourite songs took a leap into the unknown. What happened next was either a series of fortuitous accidents or a pre-determined pattern of fate, depending on your philosophical attitude to these matters.
Having decided that she wanted to record in Nashville and with a recommendation from a friend to check out Baxter's studio, Cerys set off for America in June last year and called her chosen producer from New York.
"He'd been sent a demo but he didn't really know who I was," she admits. "I rang him on a Sunday and announced I was turning up on the Monday."
She arrived, as Baxter loves to relate, with no change of clothes and carrying only a pair of odd gloves and a collection of videos that weren't compatible with American TV systems. Yet Baxter was similarly under-prepared. He was still building his studio in the backwoods at Whites Creek, the rural hamlet where he lives outside Nashville. He put Cerys up in a log cabin without running water, a bathroom or a kitchen. And, while he worked overtime to get the studio finished, he encouraged her to pass the time by writing songs.
"My original plan had been to make an album of traditional folk songs. I've been collecting them for years and on the flight over I made a list. There were 76 of them contending to get on the record," she recalls.
"But I'd take Bucky's dogs for a walk in the woods every day and I started writing. It was a lovely, conducive place to write and I could feel my confidence growing. The peace of being in the countryside and the enthusiasm of someone like Bucky made it very easy."
Once the studio and the songs were ready, Baxter set about assembling Nashville musicians with the experience and expertise to give the songs the live feel Cerys wanted.
"These were people who'd played with Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash and Tammy Wynette," she says. “I wasn't making a country album. They were curious about this girl who speaks this funny language and used to be some sort of a pop singer but who was making a completely different kind of record. It was all down to trust and that grew as we went along. "
And there's no question that ‘Cockahoop’ is a radically different kind of album to anything we ever heard from Cerys with Catatonia. "I didn't want heavy drums and lots of layered guitars and effects. We were after a groove and a vibe thing," she says. "We just tried to play the guts of the song."
Where possible, the mostly acoustic instruments were recorded live to capture the spontaneity of seasoned musicians playing off each other.
‘Caught In The Middle’ shows she's lost none of her zest as a pop melodicist. The memorably swamp-toned 'The Good in Goodbye' arrived more or less fully formed the morning after she had been to a Bob Dylan concert. And the stunning ‘Only A Fool’ is one of the most devastating songs she's yet penned.
Then there are the covers, handpicked and lovingly rendered to reflect her passion as a collector of songs ancient and modern. The album's opener, ‘Chardonnay’ was written by Roger Cook (who penned ‘Talking In Your Sleep’ for Crystal Gayle) but has never been recorded. The mysterious ‘Weightless Again’ by alt-country mavericks the Handsome Family was found by Cerys on an 'Americana' compilation. ‘Arglwydd Dyma Fi’ is an old Welsh hymn which she remembers her grandmother singing.
The playing is as vivid and potent as you would expect from some of the finest musicians in the world. But mostly, it's a record that puts the spotlight on the songs and Cerys' voice, which has taken on a richer patina than we've ever heard from her before. There are traces of folk, country, soul and pop - and much else besides. ‘Cockahoop’ is all and none of them at the same time and its felicitous agility doesn't fit easily into any musical category.
"If there is a theme to the album, it's simply a story of learning to live and enjoy life again," Cerys says. "It's about finding your feet. Learning to have faith. Tasting something that you had forgotten existed. There's nothing negative or cynical.”
"I'm looking forward to seeing if people enjoy hearing the record as much as I enjoyed making it," she says. It's the most honest record I could make."
