With an approach as magical as it is meticulous, rising singer-songwriter Matilda Cole is showing herself as an key facet to the UK alternative’s undergrowth. The Lewes-born artist has highly impressed since emerging towards the beginning of the decade, sharing two slick, emotionally resonant EPs in 2021 (“Milk Teeth”) and 2022 (“The High Dive”) respectively. She has also shone in her work away from the microphone; a founding member of Loud LDN, a female-only collective that champions artists and genderqueer creatives across the UK.
Cole has just returned with her third EP, “Pomegranate”, perhaps her most mature and sonically explorative work yet. Featuring crowd-pleasing, anthemic single “Big Mouth”, the EP is a short and sharp burst of focused and enthralling indie rock, full of strong vocal performances, intelligent songwriting and ear-worm melodies.
We catch up with the singer-songwriter to discuss her new EP, Loud LDN and her musical origins.
Listen to “Pomegranate”…
Read the full interview…
Hey Matilda! How has your year been so far?
Hi Wonderland! My year so far has been transformative. I moved out for the first time, moved to London, and started releasing music again. I feel like this year has been the start of the rest of my life.
What are your musical origins? How did you first develop your interest and nurture your talent?
I’ve always been a writer. I went to a very hippie tiny primary school that really encouraged us to find what we love and focus on that, and I loved writing. My whole life I’ve made sense of the world by writing about it, but I only really started singing in year 7 when there was a trip to Disneyland Paris that i really wanted to go on – you had to be a member of the choir so I immediately signed up and then fell in love with singing. Flash forward to age 16, and I had posted a cover of Wicked Game on Soundcloud which was heard by my now manager, he put me in songwriting sessions and slowly but surely I worked myself up to where I am now. I feel like everyone says this, but music and lyrics really are the great loves of my life.
How would you define the essence of your sound and approach?
My approach when it comes to songwriting is always that I want to write a song that is just as good whether it’s played just me and my guitar, or on stage with a full band. When I first started making music I felt like such a kid in a candy shop being lucky enough to work with producers who can essentially make any sound, so I ended up making a lot of music that now I consider a little ‘overproduced’. I kind of let myself get lost in the sonics and didn’t care as much about what I was saying. Nowadays, I always want to build a song from the ground up. I think my sound and my style is so rooted in storytelling and lyrics that I always want the production to feel like it’s adding to that, rather than carrying the song on it’s back. That’s why in this EP you’ll find a focus on more organic guitars and live sounding drums.
Talk us through the origins and ethos of Loud LDN?
Loud LDN started as a group chat between me and five or so other young female musicians in London. I knew Kat (one of the founders, @coupdekat) through a mutual friend, and we had bonded over the lack of community in the music industry. She asked if I’d want to be a part of a group chat support system, and Loud LDN was born. We started off so small, just messaging back and forth, and then slowly grew and grew and now we put on our own events and run a sick community full of the most exciting new talent to come out of the city. Our most important thing when we were starting out was to not treat it as a networking thing – we’re there to support each other but not to use each other. Of course collaboration is natural, but we wanted it to feel like a sisterhood outside of the pressures and expectations of the industry, and that still is at the heart of everything we do.
Congrats on your EP “Pomegranate”! How are you feeling about the release?
Thank you! I’m feeling great about it. I feel like finally I’ve made a project that I’m 100% happy with whether that be sonically, visually, or concept wise. This music truly feels like an extension of me – so much so that I actually don’t really care what other people think about it! Obviously I hope people like it, but I’m proud enough of this EP that it wouldn’t really effect me. I’ve never been able to say that before.
What was the process of creating the EP? What was the most difficult part of putting it together?
Pretty much all the songs were written in a sort of interim period of my life. I wasn’t releasing and wasn’t sure when I was going to, and after starting so young I was actually really enjoying the break. I think it gave me the space to have fun and enjoy taking risks with the music I was making. I made the tracks with a few different producers, and then went back in with Will Bloomfield who executively produced the whole EP and made sure it was all cohesive. I think the most difficult part has been working out how to convey the whole world to an audience – I worked so hard on the visual and sonic identity of the project that sometimes it can feel a little reductive to flog it on social media hoping someone takes the time to listen. I think when you have to choose individual snippets and cuts of a whole project it’s hard to convince people to buy into the world you want to create. But that’s the way of the modern world, and there’s been joy in it too.
How does the EP show your artistic progression from your last EP “The High Dive”?
This EP I really forced myself to be confident and stand up for what I thought was right. I realised that no one else knows better than I do when it comes to choices about my music, so I let myself be headstrong and powerful and it really paid off. I’ve learnt that people tend to like your most authentic expression of yourself, and working with Will, who’s such a vessel of talent and acceptance I really felt I could be. Each song is a badge of honour for me, I’m so proud of all of them.
Sonically, what inspired your choices on the project?
Slowdive. Pinegrove. Sharon Van Etten. Julia Jacklin. Samia. Alabama Shakes. Brittany Howard. My Bloody Valentine. Duster. The list goes on! I realised a while ago I wasn’t’ making the kind of music I listened to, so I made a conscious effort to change that with this project.
What is the EP’s perspective? What are you saying, in terms of themes?
The whole EP is an exploration of relationships told through the lens of the myth of Persephone. In the story, the Greek goddess Persephone is kidnapped by Hades to be his wife, and yet on her rescue she eats six pomegranate seeds – binding her to him for six months of the year. This is her first autonomous act of the story, and the eating of the seeds signifies her transition from girlhood to womanhood. That’s what the EP is all about for me too, that transition. Each song is about a different kind of relationship that we experience in that transition, whether that be between men and woman, mother and daughter, or young and old.
What’s your favourite tune on the new EP? Why?
Currently Mortal because it just came out! That song is also very special to me as I wrote it just after me and my girlfriend had kissed for the first time. It’s all about being confronted with the terrifying vulnerability and beauty of first queer love – and how tightly wound up in eachother all those emotions can be. It’s a really special song I think.
What’s to come from you this year?
The rest of the EP is coming very soon. And then I want to do a support tour. And then my own tour. And then world domination I suppose.
What are some of your long term plans?
I have so many songs that I’ve written in my bedroom that I’m dying to turn into a project. That’s my next big goal. I just love writing whether that’s for me or for other people, just being in those rooms and making music is the purest joy for me, so I just want to do more of that. And I want to go to Nashville and write country music, can someone help me set that up?