Matt of Matts Releases Debut Single COME THOU FOUNT OF UNFORGETTING
The self-produced track features backing vocals from the artist's 16-year-old daughter.
Dallas-based art-pop/folktronic artist Matt of Matts has released his debut single, 'Come Thou Fount of Unforgiving.' A haunting reworking of his favorite childhood hymn, the song explores fatherhood, religious trauma, and the grief hidden inside healing.
The firstborn son of an evangelical exorcist, Matt's music is deeply personal yet strangely surreal. 'Somewhere along the way I learned to sing to what I most fear,' he says. 'In the past that's been the fear of losing my mind. Later it was displaced by the fear of losing one of my children. So it's only fitting that I asked my 16 year-old daughter to sing backup vocals on a love song about terror.'
Self-produced, the track builds from loose acoustic guitar drones, bespoke synth textures, and a haunting backing choir courtesy of his daughter, creating an intimate, hallucinatory clash between heartbreak and hope, transcendence and abandonment. 'This song landed fully formed in my lap,' Matt says. 'I'm not even sure I wrote it. Some days I half understand it, most days I'm delighted to be fully mystified.'
What emerges is a love song with something sinister lurking beneath it. 'It's clearly a love song, love persisting in the midst of some fracture,' he explains. 'But there's something sinister behind it too, a looming disaster? Is it the guillotine's halves yearning to be reunited? Or maybe a love song to the earth from the apocalypse? But then why does the apocalypse refer to itself as 'we'? I'm as confused as anyone.'
The songcraft is simple and strange, literary and distinct, reverent and irreverent at once.
Photo Credit: a sea of love
Photo Credit: a sea of love
