This and all subsequent photos by Julia Khoroshilov
Mattiel is keeping Atlanta weird.
And the best kind of weird unfortunately is the kind that brings discomfort. The best kind of weird is something that doesn’t bounce back or play along. It doesn’t have a cadence that you can follow. The best kind of weird leaves you with a feeling of dissonance.
This was a weird interview.
When I got up to leave it, suddenly my left leg was three quarters of an inch longer than my right. I ended up posted against a mail bin with my arms extended, begging for someone to pick me up and carry me to my Buick. It threw my cute equilibrium off and now I can’t listen to the news because it all sounds like shit. And now I walk with a limp. But you know what? That’s what I get for trying to put weird in a box.
I thought I had Mattiel pegged man. I mean Bullseye. I’d seen Mattiel pretty early on and again throughout her career. When she takes to that stage she catwalks all over it. It felt like watching a pearl from an oyster. She radiates kasbah confidence through snapping black eyes. She’ll turn any viewer into a subterranean homesick foot fetishist with the wave of her neon wand. I was hooked. I mean line and sinker. But as I found out that day outside Aurora Coffee, Mattiel has a twin. They are identical to the untrained eye, but one only comes out at night. I’d never seen the Mattiel that quietly approached me like a straight-A sweater vest called to the Principal’s office. This Mattiel was different.
You might mistake her for a dandelion.
My mind immediately racked and tried to make the necessary computations. I tried to backtrack, rethinking the prepared questions I cling to for dear breath in favor of some more tame ones. If only I’d asked her where her favorite steak was in the city. I could do three thousand words on Mattiel’s favorite steak in the city. But woe was me. I’d fucked up. I mean big time. All the quirky Wes Anderson pastel questions seemed like tea time prostitution now. And I had to ask them anyway. Had I known to insist on a Mattiel interview after a show then this piece would have gone a lot different. That’s because I would have been interviewing a different person. And it’s not their fault. It’s mine. It’s mine because I did what every journalist does but seldom gets caught for. I had made up my mind about the subject before the interview was even written. And when the questions you prepared for the prince of Persia are suddenly asked to the Martian ambassador you get a shit soufflé.
So please forgive me for this piece’s lack of pastiche. I’m sure Creative Loafing will help you out of that ditch if you cup your hands under the right ass.
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Mattiel Brown and Jonah Swilley sat at Aurora Coffee. I believe Jonah had some sort of pastry or breakfast sandwich along with what I can only assume was an iced coffee. They were gone upon my arrival.
Do you ever find yourself worrying about how people will interpret something you’ve written?
“No.”
Mattiel and Jonah have been the team since her genesis as an unstoppable force. Mattiel would felt-pen the lyrics while Jonah and company would dig in the tunes. People have came and went. But Jonah and Mattiel have remained strong.
“You described it recently as being like Seinfeld”, Mattiel says, looking to Jonah with a quaint eagerness.
Jonah elaborates, “I look at it like, if Mattiel is Seinfeld, then I’m the Larry David of the thing.”
They want to express that though the band shares the name of its singer, they’ve always operated as a group. And where the group may have started as more of a professional collaboration between Brown and Swilley, it has blossomed into a tightly bonded friendship.
This new album is particularly indicative of this friendship. Just look at the cover, where Mattiel and Jonah embrace the kudzu as red leather-clad takes on the famous Grant Wood painting American Gothic. This is Georgia Gothic, and its stateliness works on more levels than one.
“It was exclusively us, this record,” says Mattiel of her and Swilley when asked about the process leading to Georgia Gothic’s creation, “Just the two of us in a cabin in North Georgia that we rented for a week.” From there I pictured what weird ritual that might have been. Mattiel helped me out, saying, “[Georgia Gothic] exists because we didn’t get to tour in 2020. And we figured a lot of shit out. Jonah Built the studio. We recorded it in an old Dialysis center.” (Georgia Gothic: a love letter to Kidneys). Mattiel talks about “How the chips fell into place” and this album would not have happened had the touring of their second album (2019’s Satis-Factory) not been cancelled. And when the world sits you down in your chair like an angry parent to a restless tyke, you look around and appreciate the stillness. Mattiel did this, and they liked what they saw. They realized that now more than ever was the time to write about home.
Do you think Bob Dylan will outlive us all?
“No.”
I asked her if there was a concept or an idea from Georgia Gothic that debut-album Mattiel wasn’t conscious of. I was again surprised when she told me that the mindset of debut album Mattiel is something she tries to harken back to.
“I don’t want to be writing about anything based on what has happened thus far, as far as notoriety goes. Whatever that is. I want to remain in that childlike mindset, the same way I was when I wrote that debut record” (2017’s Mattiel).
She did talk about how she’s grown lyrically within her own internal musings. And we can hear the product of all growth between these two through the new singles alone. They’re saying more through less. They speak volumes plainly.
Anything y’all wanna plug for the record?
“March 18th, Georgia Gothic out. Buy the fucking record.”
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Published in Record Plug Magazine April 2022
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