Matty Frank joined Aaron on Live & Local this week, celebrating the release of his new album “Dooda.”
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With 11 tracks ranging from the acidic pop-punk anthem “Wasted” to the dreamy, electronic (and also slightly acidic) “Folk Singer,” Frank refers to “Dooda” as his “moth album,” an exploration of nature written as he was in the process of moving from New York to the (relatively) smaller city of Durham.
“Durham is not a small town, but I was moving here from Brooklyn and I was like, ‘oh, every other city is nothing,'” he says with a laugh. “Like, I’m gonna be in the woods.”
So he started writing about the woods.
“It’s largely an album about our relationship with nature, and how people do wrong by nature, and how we can take better care of it – like, what our relationship with it could be if we were better and nicer people,” he says. “I was thinking about how we were given a world so pristine and lovely, and built our own stuff on top of it. In some ways that’s great, and in some ways it kind of ruined a great opportunity that we had to – like, just eat fruit and not have to work.”
That desire – not to have to work – recurs throughout the album as well.
“I was also writing in the midst of the pandemic,” Frank says, “so I was getting my weekly checks from the government for a time and I was like, ‘this is the best time I’ve ever had!’ There’s a (lyric) where I say, ‘I used to have three jobs, and now going to one is too much’: before the pandemic I was working three jobs in New York – and that was considered noble! – and then after the pandemic, going to one job for me became so – like, ‘I can’t believe I have to do this.’ And it was actually one of my favorite jobs ever.”
Listen to the album (and purchase it) on Bandcamp.
But while many of the lyrics dig into a general malaise about living in civilization, Frank says the album is meant to be upbeat in the end – hence the title.
“I thought (the name ‘Dooda’) really fit the carefreeness that I want people to take away,” he says. “Because it starts kind of heavy, like ‘everything sucks and it’s all of our faults,’ but then (at the end) there’s a song that’s about just appreciating how pretty everything is, how great and how amazing the natural world is, and then there’s a song about just smoking weed and having a good time. And then there’s a song that’s about the cycle of life and death, and how the knowledge of that is so freeing. I want you to not be super-worried about the state of the world.”
That also applies to Frank himself – who overcame his initial apprehensions about moving and dove immediately into the Triangle’s thriving music scene.
“I just jumped right into playing open mics and getting to know people, (and) it’s a lot better place to play music than New York,” he says. “I was nervous about leaving, but people here actually want you to do well – and want to pay you, and want you to succeed. It’s been really nice to find a little community of people here – we all go to each other’s shows and stuff like that. It’s been lovely.”
Matty Frank’s next show will be Friday, October 4, at the Speakeasy in Carrboro, starting at 7:30 p.m. with Johnny Sunrise and JP Flores alongside him on the bill. (The show is also a fundraiser, to support a friend’s top surgery.) If you miss that show, you’ll have another chance to catch him later in the month: he’ll be at Ruby Deluxe in Raleigh on Thursday, October 24.
Matty Frank joined Aaron Keck on “Live and Local” to discuss the album, promote his upcoming shows, and play three songs live: “Stalling,” “Moonflower,” and “Saitama’s Dilemma.” Listen:
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