Kalle Mattson: the Canadian dream

Ah, young singer-songwriters with brand-new record contracts. Ambitions, doubts, and the big, bad world will do anything to swallow them whole. But Kalle Mattson is ready.

"I’ve just heard that our Brussels show is sold out!” Kalle Mattson says enthusiastically, speaking to us from Ottawa, where he is trying to stay warm while temperatures outside drop below -30C. The Canadian 22-year-old will soon be coming to Europe for the first time for a warm-up round. He’s bringing his official debut Someday, the Moon Will Be Gold (out in February) and his acoustic guitar, as well as trumpet player JF Beauchamp by his side. Mattson will be coming back in the spring with his complete, five-member band, but you should go and see him now, in the cosy Huis 23, before he becomes the new Springsteen. “Haha, ‘An American dream’, the song that kicks off the album, is my attempt at a Springsteen song, but comparing me to him does me too much honour. He is an influence, yes, but so are Neil Young, Dylan, Tom Petty – no-one wrote better three-minute pop songs than him – and of course also Wilco.”

Wilco’s album Sky Blue Sky was a support when Mattson lost his mother when he was sixteen. “It was my life buoy, Jeff Tweedy articulated precisely how I felt. For a long time, I was unable to express that loss, until I wrote the song ‘Someday’, which ended up on the EP Lives in Between in 2012. That song was a catalyst; it was the first time I sang about my mother honestly and directly.” Someday, the Moon Will Be Gold, which comes wrapped in a painting by Mattson’s mother, is a dark record by a young kid dealing with loss, but it is also, as the title indicates, not entirely devoid of hope.

Llewyn Davis
Mattson’s songs alternate between a rock and folk sound, framed by wistful winds, like on the melancholy ‘Darkness’. Imagine a rootsy version of Beirut. And his finger-picking ballads would not be totally out of place in Inside Llewyn Davis, the wonderful sixties folk scene pastiche by the Coen brothers. “I just saw that film last night. It’s both heart-breaking and funny at the same time. I’m addicted to the Coens, and to that Sixties scene. Hopefully things will go better for me than for the main character, though.”

“We got bus lines to nowhere and bridges to somewhere/ But no one can ever find it” we hear in “A Love Song to the City”, a tribute to Sault Ste Marie, the little town north of Toronto where Mattson grew up. “It’s a charming place, but as a musician you can’t stay there if you ever want to be somebody. Most people spend all their time complaining that they want to leave, though, but they just keep sticking around. I guess it’s a pretty universal story. I packed my bags when I was nineteen, to go and study in Ottawa. I’ve left that behind me now, too, so I can concentrate entirely on my music. I hope it will pick up some pace now.”

KALLE MATTSON • 20/1, 20.00, SOLD OUT!, Huis 23, Steenstraat 23 rue des Pierres, Brussel/Bruxelles, 02-548.24.24, www.abconcerts.be