Matt Kik: ‘I wanted to do an album that was 100% me’

Sheffield-based Matt Kik has released his debut solo album Eponymous today (15 August), giving us 12 guitar-driven tracks spanning more than 25 years.

He describes the album title as a “joke”: ‘Lots of artists have a self-titled album, which is then referred to in the press as their eponymous album, so I thought calling my album ‘Eponymous’ would be funny!’ I say that even so, the album is actually a very good representation of him and his influences, from the moving George Harrison-esque closer ‘Your Place In Time’ to the heavy guitars in ‘Nah’ to the delicate, more folky ‘Alone While Coasting’.

The album spans songs he started writing in 2000 up until the present day. How would he describe it to someone who hasn’t heard it yet? ‘I always think I’m sort of straight rock, general rock, dad rock or classic. Is it classic rock? I don’t know. There are so many sub genres. Middle-aged rock? It’s not like the stuff I listen to, like Def Leppard or The Who, as they’re a bit heavier.’

‘I ended up with three songs, and then when it became apparent that the band was at a standstill, I thought I’d just keep making my own music’

As such, Eponymous, in parts, predates the debut album of his currently stalled band, Storm of Crows: ‘For that album (Twenty-Five Years), we all wrote four songs each,’ he said. ‘Quite soon on, I knew what my four songs were going to be. I was playing with an acoustic guitar one day, and very quickly, it turned into the song ‘Healing Time’, which became the eight-minute track on my new album. So, I thought, “Well, I’ll put it to one side”. I eventually ended up with three songs, and then when it became apparent that the band was at a standstill, I thought I’d just keep making my own music and that somehow got to four, five and six songs, and I thought: “Right, this is heading towards an album!”’

‘Nah’, which kicks off with one of the chuggiest, hookiest riffs on the album, is full-on 90’s rock, with pretty, layered up harmonies on the chorus and lyrics that become increasingly funny as the song goes unfolds. Kik’s guitar solo around two minutes in is a thing of beauty: ‘I was trying to write a different song that hasn’t happened yet,’ he said laughing. ‘I think it’s a song called ‘Rain on a Hot Pavement’ which has now turned into something else. ‘Nah’ starts out with quite serious lyrics, then in the third and fourth verse, it all falls apart. I wanted something to rhyme with ‘old’, because that comes up somewhere in the third verse. I was coming up with all of these, what was it? Oh, ‘foretold’. So I changed it to ‘three-told’, like a dodgy psychic told me my destiny was going to be three-told. And then ‘pigeonholed’. I wondered if I could put that in (laughs). So yeah, get a pigeon, put a hole in the pigeon!’

As the track goes: “When the daylight comes and twilight runs, I’m through. I won’t be having no more time with you. Got your head half on running round and round until you’re blue.”

Typically, he will film himself coming up with an idea, to go back to it later: ‘I had a chord riff and that became the chorus and I thought, just as a placeholder, I could go “nah nah nah” over the top of it, and then I thought: “Nope, that’ll do!”‘ I ask whether he knew from the start that he would put the dizzyingly fast guitar solo in it: ‘You may not have noticed this but because I’m not a lyricist, it’s the thing I hate writing the most. I’m quite good at coming up with the music. In my old band, you’d give Jimmy the music and 20 minutes later, he’d have a song – he’s a lyrics machine! Without him, it’s just me doing it. The song format is typically a couple of verses, a couple of choruses and a middle eight. I do all the verses reluctantly (laughs) and I’ll come up with the chorus, and think: “Oh God, the middle eight!” So that’s the guitar solo. In most of my songs, the middle eight is the guitar solo every time, or almost every time. Normally, I’m improvising around the minor pentatonic scale. Usually, I can’t do the whole thing in one take, so once I’ve got the solo, I’ll just record it 10 times and take the best bits of each.’

‘I had a few contenders for the last song, you’ve always got a melting pot of a couple of ideas that you’ve got‘

Kik has an impressive ability to switch it up on the album between heavier rock songs, folk songs and ballads. One of my favourite songs on the album is ‘Alone While Coasting’ which features the memorable line ‘we’re all toasting to what you’re hoping you’ll find’ and a beautiful mandolin, which turns out to be the last song he wrote for the album: ‘I had a few contenders for the last song, you’ve always got a melting pot of a couple of ideas,’ he said. ‘I had the chord progression and I quite liked it. And then I found another idea on my phone. It was overdrive guitar, quite rocky but I realised it was the same progression. I wondered if I could develop it to start acoustic and then get quite heavy? As I started writing, it just stayed acoustic, but I thought it worked well. It’s about the prevalence of AI and virtual assistants and all of that,’ he said. ‘Actually, the start of it – “running and hiding and slipping and sliding and flying and gliding through the sky of your dreams”, that’s not about AI. ’I really struggled to work out the melody for the lyrics for this song, so the first few lines were me kicking about ideas that turned into a descending melody, and eventually I’d sung it to myself so many times that it just stuck. So it’s not about anything in particular, like most of my lyrics.’

The rest of the song is about AI and scammers on the internet trying to sell you a new way to give your life away. The “toasting to what you hope you’ll find” is about giving AI prompts. Good luck with the answers, it won’t give you want you want.’

As the song goes: “Yelling and calling and climbing and falling, a thrill that’s enthralling, no-one knows what it means. No-one will tell you but they’re trying to sell you a new way to propel to giving your life away.”

When we last chatted a couple of years ago about Storm of Crows’ debut album (2022), he cited his dad who passed away many years ago, as one of his biggest influences: ‘I can’t play anything like him, though. And The Who, Fleetwood Mac, and Queen – I like playing ‘Tie Your Mother Down’,’ he said at the time. Kik was kind enough to share his dad’s folk music with me and it’s clear that he has been very influenced by his dad’s musicianship. ‘Him dying at such a young age really hurt me and I still miss him very much, but I’m so blessed in that I can put on his music and hear his voice whenever I want,’ he said at the time. ‘The most important thing to me about making this album (Twenty-Five Years) is that I can do the same for my children. I’m sure my dad would have been proud of the album too, and I’m pretty sure he’d have gotten a good laugh out of it. I got my sense of humour from him, though he was far cleverer than I am. He could have written ‘Bastard’ though. He liked writing silly songs.’

‘Timeflies’ which is brilliantly spacey with a 70’s vibe, turns out to be one of the hardest songs to play: ‘The tapping bit’s really hard,’ he admitted. ‘I did film myself at the time in 2023 playing it, then learning it and playing it again and trying to get faster. There’s one part, the tapping bit, where I’m playing it about 40 beats per minute slower than the final take. Once I’ve got through it, I go: “Right, now ten BPM faster”. So that one needed weeks and weeks! The part you say is spacey is a five-part harmony of me. There’s a middle part, a very high harmony, a very low harmony, and then two in between, but they’re very strongly auto-tuned. I use auto-tune on most of my vocals anyway because I’m not the strongest singer but when you do that, you get a natural wavy line. For this, I’ve just drawn straight lines in the tuner, so it’s perfectly in tune, which gives it a very synthetic sound. For the effect, in the EQ window, when you see the picture of the curve, you can grab one of the points that raises or lowers the curve. When it goes, “Timeflies”, I grab the point, drag it around and record the movement.’

Kik works for Wonderdome as a planetarium presenter, mostly teaching primary school children about space, something he’s equally passionate about in his downtime: ‘I’m very much into space and love reading about it, especially the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions,’ he said. ‘I’d describe myself as an intermediate photographer and have a couple of nice-ish cameras and lenses. I always take the holiday photos, and am also sometimes requested to take photos of things at the local primary school like the Year Six play or leaver’s disco.’

‘It was the first song that I wrote on my own that I was really proud of’

Fascinatingly, Kik keeps a book in which he has written down all of his song lyrics, dated, over the years, allowing him to keep track of his songwriting and he gets it to show me: ‘For a long time, I thought ‘The Future Alone’ was the oldest song on the album because that’s one that I wrote back in 2000 or 2001,’ he said. ‘It was the first song that I wrote on my own that I was really proud of and I thought I should do something with it. In lockdown, I recorded it and did a video of me and put it on YouTube. I’ve gone back to listen to it. It’s terrible, it’s so bad!,’ he said looking genuinely mortified. ‘I didn’t use any effects, so that’s horrible. No tuning on the vocal, so it’s really nice to have redone it properly. However, it’s not the oldest song, that’s actually ‘What I Need’, a song I started earlier in the year 2000 and which is now also on the album.’

Music became part of his life very early one, thanks to his dad, who played in a folk band called Gentleman Soldier. Kik started playing the guitar in his teens and because he’s left handed, his dad lent him an electric guitar and strung it upside-down for him. Endearingly, he’s still got his dad’s acoustic guitar, and it makes an appearance on ‘Smarter Than This’, another of my favourites, which feels like a Carpe Diem song about being dissatisfied with life and wanting to make the most out of it. ‘This one is actually semi-autobiographical,’ he said. ‘Staying up late, getting up early, that’s me. I’m not in that bad of a mood in the morning, though (laughs). In the back of this book, I’ve written down all my ideas of things that I can stick in a song and when I use one, I’ll cross it out. Unfortunately, I didn’t do it this time (laughs). So I wrote this song and put it in here and then ‘Down ‘n’ Dirty’ has almost exactly the same line in it: “It’s Friday nights, tried and true, Monday mourning for her and you”. The ‘Smarter Than This’ riff is quite simple to play but try playing that “ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding” for three and a half minutes without making a mistake – it’s really fun!’

How does it feel writing songs now compared to writing songs with his former bandmates? ‘It’s torture,’ he deadpanned. ‘Sometimes a song comes to me quite quickly, like ‘Alone While Coasting’, once I realised there was a theme. I’ve started a few new ones and I know now what the second album’s going to be called. I’m not telling you,’ he said, beating me to the question. ‘But it does have another joke name in the same vein as ‘Eponymous’. If I get to the third album, I know what that’s going to be called as well! For the second one, I thought it would make a good song title, so I started writing it weeks ago thinking I’ve got this two-month grace period. Now I’ve announced the album, I’ve got two months to get cracking on the next one! I’ve got a bit of the music and a bit of the lyrics but I’ve just stopped. I can’t write this, it’s so hard!’

‘I think I could busk through that but with a lot of these, I’d have to go and look up the chords – I can’t remember my own songs!’

He jokes that remembering how to play his own songs can be a challenge: ‘I write them and then work out how I’m going to record them, learn the part, play it. Once it’s finished, a couple of months later, I can’t play it again! I mean, ‘Smarter Than This’, I think I could busk through that but with a lot of these, I’d have to go and look up the chords – I can’t remember my own songs!’ I tell him I hear this a lot, particularly from musicians who haven’t gigged for a while and have to go back and learn their songs to go on tour and he laughs: ‘Exactly. I think once you get to the stage where you can play it on autopilot, that’s probably all right, but I’m not there yet!’

‘Your Place In Time’ is a beautiful closer, a pared back, delicate song about a break up with a lovely vintage feel and with lyrics that are both moving and heartfelt: ‘I basically wrote the beginnings of the lyrics twenty something years ago but this time, when I came to it, I’ve chopped and changed it quite a bit, I’ve not kept a lot of it,’ he said. ‘It’s about a couple splitting up, although I’ve never been in a couple that split up as I married my first girlfriend, so the song is me imagining how a relationship could come apart. The guy has maybe been a bit of a dick and gone: “Oh, it’s not quite right. I’m leaving” and realises that was stupid and wants to get her back but she’s already moved on.’ I say that it is really well put together for someone who’s never been through a bad breakup because it feels so genuine and has a real depth to it.

As the track goes: “What can I say to you that you don’t already know? I feel sometimes like I should walk away. But you’re on your first chance and I’ve used all of mine. It’s not yet time for me to stray. Just because it’s different doesn’t make it any better, only a fool can’t work that out.”

Have his Storm of Crows bandmates Paul Coates (guitars, vocals and synthesiser) and Jimmy Medway (bass guitar, vocals and cajón) heard his new album yet? ‘Not that I’m aware of, no,’ he said. ‘I had the listening party a few weeks ago and about five of them were chatting, so I knew who they were. There were a few others listening in and never identifying themselves. But Paul has since said: “Well done with the listening party, sorry, I couldn’t make it” but I wonder if he was sneakily there listening?!’

A couple of weeks after we chat, Kik tells me that both bandmates have now heard his album: ‘I gave Jimmy a CD when he came over for dinner a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve even had a message through Facebook from his mum who heard it from him and said she loves it,’ he said. ‘I posted a copy to Paul too, and then he also came to the second Bandcamp listening party I held at the end of July, so it was very nice to have him there. He said that ‘Down ‘n’ Dirty’ was his favourite which is interesting, as it’s probably my least favourite!’

”Masquerade’, that’s my George Harrison song’

I ask him who he would most like to write a song with dead or alive but say I know he’s going to say George Harrison: ‘Yes, absolutely right!,’ he said laughing. ‘He’s my favourite Beatle. He was in my mind when I wrote – what’s the song called? Let’s have a look in here,’ he said, picking up his CD. ‘Yes, ‘Masquerade’, that’s my George Harrison song because it’s one chord the whole way through. It’s just all around the E, the whole time with about three or four of the strings muted. When I recorded it, I had a mix of him and Tom Petty in my head. A songwriter who’s alive? I probably shouldn’t just pick Paul McCartney, should I?! Who IS alive that I like? Lindsay Buckingham, he could be good, he’s a bit mad.’ I say I reckon he could be a bit temperamental and he laughs: ‘There has to be a reason they keep kicking him out of the band! Maybe he wouldn’t be the best person to write with?!’

Who would he have in his supergroup? ‘Ooooh, I’m trying to think which instrument first,’ he said. ‘I might use Nandi Bushell (the young girl who shot to fame doing drum battles with Foo Fighters’ frontman Dave Grohl during lockdown). I’ve seen her live as well, when my youngest daughter did Young Voices. Last year, she was in it and they did a whole rock set, it was brilliant. On guitar, Nuno Bettencourt (lead guitarist of rock band Extreme). He’s incredible, I think he’s the best guitarist on the planet. I never particularly rated Van Halen. He was technically brilliant but I don’t think his solos are that listenable or catchy, whereas the solos in Extreme stuff like ‘Play With Me’ and ‘Star’ are so good. He’s my favourite guitarist of all time.’

He’s mulling who to have on bass: ‘I can’t say Paul McCartney, can I?! If I’m going supergroup, do you know Charles Berthoud? He’s a bass player on YouTube, a ginger guy from Britain, he’s phenomenal, he can play anything. He did a gig with Victor Wooten (from Béla Fleck and the Flecktones) who said: “Tones like this should not be coming out of a guy that colour, he’s too funky to be white!” (laughs). For the vocalist, I might have to go with Betty from Portobello Express (an Austrian psych-blues-rock band).’ Betty Nagl is a mutual friend of ours and I tell him she’s going to be delighted when she hears this. ‘There’s a song on this album that I was so very tempted to ask her to do, ‘Down ‘n’ Dirty’, but I wanted to do an album that was 100% me without anyone helping at all,’ he said. ‘I hate my vocal on it, it should have been her. The first song I’m writing for the next album, I’m imagining it as a duet between me and her…but years in the future, probably! I need to finish the song first!’