Written over the course of approximately three years, Matt Maltese’s fifth studio record Hers is crafted with tenderness, sensibility, and a clear understanding of the effectiveness of a live band. In listening to Maltese’s lyrics—which embrace the melodramatic while also filtering intense feelings to find balance—coupled with the gentle swing of the music, everything becomes romantic, even the sad endings, the frustrating pining, and those profound moments of self-reflection. Romance itself transforms into a sound, and it becomes an all-encompassing word, not just a loose synonym for “love” (which also takes on many forms, moods, and expressions in life, not just in Hers).

“So much of the music is, I guess, what I’ve always wanted to make a record sound like,” says Maltese. “I felt like I just wanted to do justice to the songs with the arrangements feeling warm, and rich, and everything that I love when I listen to music.”

Northern Transmissions sat down with Maltese to discuss the record, which comes out May 16. Yet, amidst the discussion of personal growth, composition, and excitement with the sonic world he’s created, Maltese also looks back on one of his busiest working periods yet. With his label Last Recordings On Earth growing, more opportunities to write for other artists, a covers album, a commissioned score for The Globe’s Christmas production of Twelfth Night, among other things, the time “away” from himself gave him the skills necessary to come back and pour his heart into Hers.

NT: Before we get into Hers, I wanted to get a feeling about everything that’s been going on the past year. You’ve done a lot in terms of record production: featuring for the Chet Baker Sings anniversary album, writing a score for the Globe’s production of Twelfth Night over the Christmas holiday. You’ve also released a covers album, signed more artists to your record label, and have collaborated with many musicians. So, can we get a feeling of how this album situates in the midst of all of that? Like, a general timeline?

MM: Yeah! I mean, yeah, you’re right, there has been a decent amount of stuff in the past year. I definitely feel like the album actually took up quite a lot of it. The Shakespeare thing was wonderful, but that was sort of a couple dotted weeks of very intense work, whereas this album was the thing that I lived with for two years, you know? The other things were like welcomed distractions because it is nice to have an excuse to take a breather from the intense process of an album. I’d say, yeah, it’s been generally busy…I like it to be busy quite clearly! But I do also think that this record—for the first time in a long time—didn’t feel incredibly rushed to me, even though I know that I put out the covers album last year and an original album the year before. I did actually have quite a lot of time for this record, even if on paper that seemed like a lie. Yeah, I promise I did have what I felt like was a good amount of time to make this!

NT: Could you go into a bit more detail about the writing, the recording, the production, etc. of the new record?

MM: I started writing it probably about three years ago now — when I put out [Driving Just to Drive] in 2023, but by that time I had sort of finished it a year before. So yeah, it’s been about a two, three-year process. In bits and pieces, I kept adding songs to the pile in a way that I’m normally not very good at. I like to move quickly through work, I guess, and make a lot of it and move on. With this one, I stopped myself from doing that a bit; I felt like I wanted to have two hours of music to choose half an hour from, you know? And roughly that’s where it ended up! So yeah, the writing went on for a year and a half, probably amongst everything else.

The production took probably about six months all in all. I started producing it around the moment I got back from the US tour in spring of last year. I honestly didn’t stop until the day before I went on the Asia tour—that was when I sent it off to be mixed. Then I was mixing it remotely in Asia, which I don’t recommend, but yeah, it was a really intense, six-month production process. I had the Shakespeare thing and stuff, but I mostly just cleared any other work and just made this a priority. It was incredibly intense to produce a record myself where I also had the option to keep adding stuff. Before, I was quite constricted to minimize them just by budget, time, and ability, but with this record, I felt a bit more capable of adding things…which is such a simple, 10-year-old boy way of saying it. The process was a lot longer but a lot more rewarding — that extra 5% percent that actually takes 95% of your effort and headspace.

NT: One thing that I noticed while listening to the record is that, even though jazz has always been an influence in in the work that you produce— songs that have this kind of lounge-y, jazz vibe dating back to your first record Bad Contestant (2018) and the madhouse EP (2020)—here, you expand on that and wrote these gorgeous orchestral arrangements for the songs. I wanted to know more about heading in this bigger direction in terms of…well, “jazzing out,” I guess.

MM: Haha yeah, that’s a good word for it! I guess I’ll follow in from what I was saying before. I had time and a bit more at my disposal to make Hers how I wanted to make it. Putting it quite bluntly, when you’re producing it yourself, you’re not paying a producer, so you have that money to be like, ‘Okay, I’m doing this for free and for myself, so now I’m going to get great musicians and a great studio.’ I think it was a really concerted choice…Yeah, I mean, so much of the music, the way it sounds and is arranged on this record, is, I guess, what I’ve always wanted to make a record sound like. As you said, I don’t think I haven’t hinted at those things before; I’ve had those influences. But songs like “Pined For You My Whole Life” or even “Tangled” are exactly the kind of stuff that ticks my heart the most, I think. The players I chose to make this record with were purposely chosen as well. Some players that I brought in were all inclined that way too! It was kind of like, white boys playing jazz, you know, which is always a bit funny… It was just a lot of fun, and yeah, I would make that kind of music for the rest of my life! It’s so great.

NT: In the intro to you first track, “Arthouse Cinema,” I just wanted to confirm: is that a clarinet solo, and could we credit the person who does it? It’s gorgeous.

MM: That was a clarinet arrangement I made, and it was played by this wonderful man called Harvey Dweller, who also did some additional production and played loads of woodwind bits all over the record. Basically, every bit of woodwind you hear is him, other than a few where I’ve sampled a sound and played it through midi. He’s a huge, huge part of the woodwind on the record.

NT: How would you describe the musical design for the album? You said that it’s something that you’ve always wanted your music to sound like: how do you think that influenced the songwriting process in general, as well as the overall concept you wanted to build for the record?

MM: It was maybe the other way around, actually. The songwriting, because of how it all came out, demanded… Put quite simply, it felt like my most mature work. So, I wanted to do it justice— whatever that meant—and part of that decision was going all in on a song. A really obvious example is “Always Some MF” where the song doesn’t hold back on the “song” front, and I wanted the arrangement similarly to just be the most luscious it could possibly be. I felt like I just wanted to do justice to the songs with the arrangements feeling warm, and rich, and everything that I love when I listen to music.

NT: For the songwriting process in general, you’ve mentioned in posts about the concept that you’ve had for the record—the inspiration that you took for it. And the songs themselves have very dialogical structures to them; like, there’s always another character involved. So, I was wondering if you could get into that a bit more to think about the album as a whole, the lyrics, and the stories that you wanted to tell throughout.

MM: They are, as you say, obviously about another person most of the time, and some are about situations from my life. It’s an honest but melodramatic depiction of a lot of aspects of my life—all things I’ve gone through. I’ve always vouched for a certain amount of mystery, you know? I don’t want people to know which bits I’ve made up, which bits are real. I definitely don’t think I’m someone that can write a great song unless there is an element of truth to it! So that’s kind of where I land: a mysterious, gray area of truth. But yeah, as the title suggests, a lot of it is kind of dedicated to one person.

NT: But in my personal experience listening to Hers, I think that some of the strongest tracks are the ones that take on a more introspective angle. “Holiday From Yourself” and “Everybody’s Just As Crazy As Me” still keep that dialogical structure, but they’re written more like conversations with yourself. and they kind of take a more like looking at yourself, but you also just the second person. Could you talk more about writing those tracks?

MM: With introspection, the more I do it, the more indulgent it feels because I’ve done so much of it already. I’ve done enough of it for a lifetime, and I guess with those kinds of songs, they take a long time to say something with the level of humor and detail that I want. where it feels. Those kinds of songs demand a certain lightness because they can just seem so self-involved. I’d like to think that I’m not taking myself too seriously in my music because I don’t think I do in my real life, but I also want these songs to be great and not a joke. So, it’s like kind of this balance that I’m trying to find: when I listen back to stuff, I think I’m sort of always on that tightrope where it’s too silly or too serious. I guess I get through that by being quite overtly melodramatic. Like, “Everybody’s Just As Crazy As Me” was probably six months of observations written as couplets. I’ve messed with those verses for so long just to make the nonsensical tangents mak any sort of sense. And yeah, I think that one particularly has got the closest to a kaleidoscopic take on my own view of life and my place in it. But yeah, I’m going to keep trying with my writing, keep trying to make it even better.

NT: Yeah, as one does when writing’s your entire career!

MM: Oh, can’t ever stop writing…never!

NT: That was that was an interesting thing that you said, especially when it comes to finding that balance between the melodramatic and tempered, the truthful and the fictitious. It also reminded me of your earlier comment where you said that you see this as your most mature album yet. In a retrospective lens, how have you seen the progression in your songwriting from your first record in 2018 to now?

MM: I mean, to truly answer that, I’d need a few weeks! Generally, compared to my older records, maybe I find that the love songs have something a little different because they’ve come from a longer-term relationship than from shorter infatuations. So, there’s obviously something quite simplistically different there.

But when it comes to how I’ve generally matured—how my songwriting has changed—I’d like to think I’ve gotten better at my use of comedy. I listened to my first record, and I feel like I come across as a bit of a nutter. I’m saying like, insane things! I don’t have anything against my 18- year-old self like making that music, but the way I want to use comedy and place it in a song now, it’s just different. I’m not going to say it’s better or more tasteful, but maybe just I’ve honed myself. I’ve done this job for a long time, and I treat songwriting as a craft that I’m doing every day. I probably have gotten better and more efficient, and, maybe in a boring way, I know to do the right thing more than I did back then…But! I also think you get wonderful things from not knowing how to use these tools as much. That just reflects your age at the time of writing in a…right way.

There are probably quite a lot of other differences as well. There are songs on this record like “Cure For Emptiness” where I’m incredibly earnest in a way that I previously wouldn’t have allowed myself to do without a little bit of dig or a jab at myself. But yeah…I don’t know, I find it so hard to retrospectively look at myself! I’ll work out the history of Matt Maltese one day, haha. I’d say my writing has grown up—which I’m sure everyone would hope so, because I am the most grown up I can be right now. That’s how life goes when you get older, you know?

NT: I get that completely! As someone who also cannot avoid getting older, it’s crazy that maturity’s a thing that happens. In the vein of maturity and the looking at the type of music that you’ve dealt with throughout the years and, in a sense, put you on the map: the romance song. You don’t have to get into the personal territory at all, but purely from a songwriter’s perspective, when it comes to writing a romance song, how do you think that you’ve changed the form, if at all? You’ve experimented with it throughout like this record in particular.

MM: I think that with when it comes to the “romance song,” I think that I’d, in quite an obvious way, incorporated the physical side of love more. Ha, as a British person, it is painful to say that in an interview…! But yeah, I think the record has a bit of sexuality in it that is either interpreted or seen. And maybe because that has come from um a longer-term relationship, and having more time to reflect on it in like, a non-shitty way. There’s something that let me feel more emboldened to talk and sing about those things. And I found there was obviously a lot of space for humor in those things as well. You know, 18–19-year-old me was singing about romance and using the phrase “making love,” which is just an insane phrase to use as an 18-year-old. But now, I’m just probably being more simple and real with it, or something like that. I recognize that my romance songs are maybe a little bit more…salacious—I don’t know if that’s actually the right word. But yeah, I think that’s what I have to say about it.

NT: I wanted to ask you more about the music business side of your life, which is now that you have your own record label, Last Recordings On Earth, and you’ve been signing a couple artists to it, taking on this new-ish role as producer and writer for others. How has it been so far? Especially since everyone’s operating totally in the indie world, which can be really difficult to navigate sometimes, as I’m sure you know well.

MM: Totally! It’s been, as you can imagine, a full-on ride. I think when I started it three years ago, I probably had a very little idea of what I was getting into. Deep down, I knew that I enjoyed those moments of recording sessions where I would write for other artists, and I would have a two-hour chat with them at the beginning. It would feel like I was imparting some—well, not necessarily wisdom, or maybe it was—experience of my life onto theirs. They’re often much younger artists with the whole world ahead of them, so they could be vulnerable to like…bad people, you know? And when I started the label, I felt like it made my life more meaningful. I was able to take some responsibility for artists that I cared about. The two acts I signed: I really have a lot of love for what they do, who they are as people, and the journeys they’ve gone through. That’s been great! It’s also been incredibly time-consuming, but of course it was going to be time-consuming. But no, I just take it seriously and I I’ve enjoyed I’ve enjoyed it so far.

For the first five, six years of my musical career, there wasn’t a lot of collaboration. I was kind of like a bedroom artist making music in my room for the most part, at least. And then when I was able to write for artists—to sign other artists and work with them—I found powerful community in all of that. It’s just such a human thing is really nice. It also sort of takes the spotlight away from yourself and your own life, which I think is a really important thing, sometimes. Like, I’m someone who probably has like, an unhealthy amount of spotlight on them because of the job I’ve chosen. So, it’s nice to counteract that with serving other people’s goals and not being the most important person in the room, you know? When you’re an artist, you can choose that to be the case all the time if you want, but I really enjoy stepping out of my life and myself and just working for other people.

NT: Has writing songs for other people, helping them with their music, and, as you’ve said, stepping out of your own self and your own habits been particularly beneficial when you eventually have to bring it back home and write music for yourself?

MM: To be honest, I think that there was a period where I was doing even more of that, and when I then came back to write for myself, it was almost like I was, for a moment, re-introducing myself to that practice. For this record, I had really missed having a three-month chunk of time and the process of getting bored and banging your head against the wall, just trying to get those ideas to come every day. I would say that this has made me cherish my own thing a lot more because it is also actually the only thing in my life where I can be completely uncompromising, you know? When you are collaborating with people, you’re serving them, which is wonderful, and I wouldn’t want that to be different. But you’re serving their goal rather than yours when you’re in your own in a room writing song. It’s a much harder North Star to follow. And I think that is something I never want to lose because that road can end somewhere really unpredictable, basically… I think it’s definitely been a wonderful balance, and doing each one makes you want to do the other one as well!

Pre-order Hers by Matt Maltese HERE