” Like Flowers on a Molten Lawn is a bit like a story that goes all over the place,” says Matt Holubowski straight away. For the singer-songwriter, the story of this fourth album began with a poem that evokes spring, that of the American EE Cummings published in the 1920s Spring Is Like a Perhaps hand. “I started from this idea of slow and precise growth that changes direction here and there, from something really delicate,” he says.
At the time of the beginning of his album, Matt Holubowski had indeed the impression of carrying on his shoulders the whirlwind of life. “I felt the need to take more time to do things. I was in a moment of exploring sounds and the studio. This poem allowed me to see each song as a small growth”, explains the musician. He then decided to apply the philosophy of Spring Is Like a Perhaps Hand to his new creations, always with this idea in mind of the death of nature, then of its rebirth when spring came. “It’s something that touched me a lot at that moment in my life and which inevitably colored Like Flowers on a Molten Lawn,” he says.
A flower
There is also this dream made by Matt Holubowski in 2017 after a trip to Guatemala. “One day, I found myself above a volcano and I had an incredible view of the one opposite,” says the Quebecer, forever marked by this grandiose image. And to continue: “In my dreams, then, I saw this mountain, but, in front of me, there was a lava field on which grew a solitary flower. It was wonderful. »
Over time, this dreamlike vision thus reappeared in his imagination in several different contexts. “I’m in a suburb where there are lots of identical houses, with cement sidewalks and lawns, but at home, the lawn is lava”, he confides about this dream, this recurring thought. “I tried to find meaning in that, and that image fueled the creation of Like Flowers on a Molten Lawn “, he assures.
The artist adds that the idea of this lonely flower came to him when he felt a certain fatalism, “this melancholy with a bit of hope all the same”. “I was inhabited by this kind of assumption that everything means nothing,” he says. This was not necessarily negative, on the contrary. It rather translates how I am and how it feels in my music. If his generation is constantly bombarded with messages announcing a more or less imminent end of the world, Matt Holubowski is convinced that refocusing on individual lives, friends and family helps manage this anxiety. “This flower that grows in a context of impossible survival in theory brings me a lot of comfort. I tell myself that deep down, even if we have to face all these problems, we are in fact strong enough to overcome them. »
Acknowledgement
Since he considers his most recent album as an entity that scatters, Matt Holubowski concedes that his influences do not stop there. The genesis of Like Flowers on a Molten Lawn actually started with the opening track End Scene, a bit like a tale where the apocalypse comes first. “I had this idea while listening to the audiobook of Memoirs and Misinformation, by Jim Carrey and Dana Vachon. He says that at the time the cover photo was taken, a false nuclear bomb alarm had occurred in Hawaii and people were being told to prepare for the end of the world,” notes the songwriter- interpreter.
He is still fascinated today by this paradoxical passage which oscillates between terror and gratitude. “There was Jim Carrey, sitting on a beach with the calm before him, knowing the end was coming. The disc is a bit part of that too, ”he underlines. Some will therefore be surprised when he adds that he was also inspired by the animated series rick and morty. “The scientist goes from one parallel universe to another hoping to find happiness. In this spirit of parallel and wacky universes, precisely, was born the song Gardens v. Mowers. “At the beginning, I wanted to make a satirical album of our time, where we are outraged by everything… I still kept the improbable tone of this title where the gardens are at war with the mowers”, he explains, amused.
The song Flirt With Boredom is finally the one by which Matt Holubowski closes the loop of Like Flowers on a Molten Lawn, the one that goes to the essence of EE Cummings’ poem. “We tried to record Flirt With Boredom for my second album, Lonelinessthen as part of Weird Ones two times. But it didn’t work…” he admits. One day when he was in the studio with his producer and musician Pietro Amato, the revival of the track suddenly took shape. “We ended up in another studio, with Pietro, and we were a little desperate… That’s where he started playing drums and I started playing piano and Flirt With Boredom, which has been following me since 2016, came out as we know it now. It literally took three albums,” he admits. According to him, it perfectly reflects the perspective of Spring Is Like a Perhaps Hand. “That’s it, to assume who we are, the way we want to be, and to take the time to do it. »
If he has always loved nature, Matt Holubowski admits, in recent years, to having dodged the music he composes naturally to avoid falling into the a priori outdated prejudices of musicians who draw their inspiration “from flowers “. ” With Like Flowers on a Molten Lawn, I fully assume this aspect of me who loves the forest and flowers. I don’t really care what’s good or bad, if I’m part of the norm or if I’m out of the lot,” he says. For him, “all that has lost its importance”, and the flower has become the symbol par excellence of a liberating feeling.
” Thanks to Like Flowers on a Molten LawnI was able to relearn how to do what I love the most, and so much the worse for what people think of it and what they do with it, ”concludes Matt Holubowski, who obviously enjoys going all over the place.