CERYS MATTHEWS On new music, Christmas plans and why she loves Cardiff

TENDER LOVING CERYS

Welsh treasure Cerys Matthews tells us about her new album, her passion for poetry and her ever-lasting love for Cardiff By Lisa Evans

When I think of poetry, I think of poems. Pretty stupid-sounding, obvious statement, that, isn’t it? But Cerys – you know the Cerys I’m talking about, she doesn’t need a surname – says poetry isn’t just about poems; poetry is everything and it’s infinite. And the sooner we open our minds to that way of thinking, the better.

In fact, the multi-million selling musician even gives me a bit of a telling off in her smoky Welsh lilt for putting poetry in such a small box. But, she says, a lot of people do, because we think back to our school days when poetry was on the curriculum, and many of us didn’t look at another stanza or sonnet ever again. I personally put poems – the strict kind, with rhyming couplets and iambic pentameter – firmly in the education pigeonhole, where I was force-fed it and had no choice in the matter, and I dropped it the day exams finished.

Or did I? Cerys says I absolutely did not leave poetry in the lurch that day, and, instead, I experience it every moment of my life.

“Even a walk in the woods or a run down the lane can be poetic,” says the Cardiff-born Catatonia former frontwoman. “There’s poetry in familiar phrases, in a few lines of a song that’s in your head, it’s on trains, it’s in books, it’s in the first nursery rhymes you ever remember your parents singing to you when you were little.”

Then she starts to give me an original rendition of Gee Ceffyl Bach, the first Welsh nursery rhyme she remembers being sung as a child. It feels like a ‘moment’ when Cerys Matthews – yes, I’m saying her surname now, as it adds to this pinch-me moment I’m having – sings directly to you during an interview.

The reason the national treasure and I are even having this discussion is because I’m interviewing her about her new album, We Come from the Sun, which, during our chat, I label as a ‘poetry album’.

“I don’t want to count it as a poetry album,” she says. “I would define all songs as poems, anyway. But if you specifically call it a ‘poetry album’, some people will think they won’t like it and will immediately dismiss it. It’s like when people say ‘I hate jazz’, but they like Louis Armstrong, and when they say ‘I hate poetry’ but they like Bob Dylan. All of life is poetry.”

She’s absolutely right. When you think about it, poetry is in all song and rap lyrics, it’s in graffiti on the side of the road, it’s even in mantras and quotes that we screenshot from Instagram. It goes far beyond assonance and blank verse, it’s an expression with no boundaries and shouldn’t be thought of as confined to a yellowing old book in the classroom.

“That’s it, you’ve got it now,” she says, her words smiling warmly. “A good turn of phrase can have power. And when there’s trouble in the world, you see it even more. It’s a natural reaction of human beings, to try and protest or process or comfort using words. Take away somebody’s words and you take away all that they are.”

For We Come from the Sun, which will be released by Decca in January 2021, Cerys selected 10 UK poets, who recorded their words at Abbey Road Studios. Her aim was to include as many varying voices from

LOCAL LOVE You grew up in Cardiff, tell us what you love about the city… I was born in Cardiff… and I have lots of friends there. I love Roath and Splott, and there’s such a rich history in the city – from Shirley Bassey to Tiger Bay. It’s a melting pot of influences and cultures. And not to mention there’s a castle right in the middle.

I’m fascinated by Cardiff’s stories… I recently did a show on BBC Four about St Fagans National Museum of History, and we were looking at pictures of Grangetown and Splott etc. The things I learnt were incredible – watch it and find out!

There’s great food in the city too… There’s a vegetarian Indian on Penarth Road which is amazing, and there’s a Japanese restaurant in the middle of St David’s (I don’t know if it’s still there) that was a favourite of mine. And just outside Cardiff there are lovely villages with log fires and roast dinners. If you couldn’t tell, I love food, hence my cookbook [Where the Wild Cooks Go. See a recipe from the book on page 45].

“It feels like a ‘moment’ when Cerys Matthews sings directly to you during an interview”

Cerys’s new album, We Come from the Sun, is a light and dark sound journey

QUICKFIRE ROUND What are your plans for Christmas? This Christmas it will be hard to make plans because of everything going on in the world, but every Christmas for me is a down-tools time. I spend time with family watching stupid fi lms like Blades of Glory. How have you been coping lately with everything that’s been going on in the world? During this strange time, I’ve realised I get cabin fever really badly. I’ve also been fi nding it really hard not seeing my family.

Who was your biggest inspiration growing up? Bob Dylan.

Surprise us… I’m addicted to indoor rock climbing.

Cerys’s Christmas plans include watching her favourite silly fi lm, Blades of Glory

The singer’s favourite places in Cardiff are Roath and Splott, and she says the city fascinates her

“Cardiff is a melting pot of infl uences and cultures”

diff erent areas, heritages and perspectives as possible. And she doesn’t feature on the album at all. “I was the pilot and I was fl ying the plane, but I didn’t sing on the album,” says the BBC Radio 6 Music presenter. “I didn’t want to have my voice on it. Today’s world is very noisy, I wanted one beautiful album to come together and quiet the noise. We are living in extraordinary times, I wanted to respond but had the urge to off er more than one voice, more than one perspective. Not an echo chamber.” With the theme of Genesis and new beginnings, she curated and composed the new album and, along with Joe Acheson of Hidden Orchestra, created a sound journey, one with lots of light and dark. “It’s an aural adventure,” she says. “Instead of just using instruments like guitars and pianos, we used fi eld recordings to take the listener to urban settings and rural settings and even inside the human body where you can hear blood circulation and heart beats. It’s a world to get lost in.” The album’s fi rst single, Flame Lily by MA.MOYO, was released in October to coincide with National Poetry Day, and Cerys describes it as a bold celebration of women: powerful and strident. Will we hear Cerys sing anytime soon, then? “That book is defi nitely closed for a while,” she says. “The last album I sang on was in 2013, I think. I’ve spent my life singing for my supper, so I’m lucky I was involved in books, festivals, radio and diff erent ways of earning my keep. I like a bit of variation.” Cerys hopes that We Come from the Sun will be the fi rst in a series of this genre of album on Decca, with life on earth as inspiration. “It’s as simple and complex as that,” she says. Just don’t call them poetry albums, OK? ■

Cerys’s album, We Come from the Sun, will be released by Decca in January 2021; www. cerysmatthews.co.uk

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