On the Rise
Matt-Felix

That’s why a first glance at London-based singer/songwriter Matt-Felix was so striking. On Instagram, often in black and white, he’s a cabaret star yanked into 2024. Austerity and romance go with his Harry Styles-esque smoldering allure, but a closer look reveals a playfulness too. Watch the video for “Lay Low”, a piano-rock anthem about desperation, and he’s waltzing around a circus big top decked in chic outfits. “You’re just another man on the payroll,” he chastises, winking in a crafty hot air balloon or in the mouth of a demented, grinning moon. It’s the kind of stuff Wes Anderson or a young David Bowie might drool over.

When I chat with him over Zoom, his image is one of my first questions. “I think it’s just as important as the music, in a way,” he says about his persona. We both agree it doesn’t come across as calculated. “I don’t want it to feel too polished for an artist that’s just coming out,” he says, explaining that his girlfriend of nine years is in charge of the visuals (“She does all the creative, basically”), commanding the aesthetic ship.

The moon makes another appearance in his latest video, for new single “Kingdom of You & Me”, a community effort to craft an exquisite mini-film in which Matt-Felix buys a moon from two guys on a boat. It’s an image he says he’d pictured even when writing the song, and all the pieces somehow came together to make it happen. “We pull so many favours from amazing [directors of photography] that are doing this for free or because they like the music or whatever, which is really sweet,” he says. “That people around you will just hop on and help you out, building shit or painting things all for free, it’s amazing. And on set it’s all our friends, making the video together.”

The pounding synths and soaring voice of “Kingdom of You & Me” is a taste of his debut EP of the same name, out today. Offering plenty of cinema, romance and drama, it’s inspired by classic musicians like Nick Cave, Bowie and Bob Dylan, with some modern references too, like Arctic Monkeys. I make a comparison to Taylor Swift, as they both write one hell of a bridge, but Matt-Felix says he’s “yet to dive into that ocean [of songs].” His mother introduced him to French artists like Serge Gainsbourg and particularly Jacques Higelin, who motivated some of the EP’s theatrics, like the dark undercurrents of “Leave, Just to Stay”. I feel like he could easily adapt the songs to a film score or work in musical theatre, but that could be a future project: “I feel like it’s something you do when you’re 40 or something,” he says.

For now, his songs and videos are enough on their own, standing out from the crowd with their indictments of modern dating and stories about people on the edge of society, delivered with a cheekiness and sneaky brilliance that reveals an empathetic writer at heart. I had originally assumed that “Lay Low” tracked a submissive, flatlining relationship – “There’s something in the way she says no / …You’re just another trick in their cabaret show” – but Matt-Felix explains that it’s actually about a regular at his local pub. “He’s there every morning, and he just sits in the corner and drinks,” he says. “I had this romantic image of who he is and what he does. The chorus came from him, even though that’s probably not his life. But it was an image I built up in my head.”

Through our conversation I learn I’m usually wrong about what his songs mean. Or, perhaps not wrong, but certainly reaching for analysis while Matt-Felix is doing the same. One day after storming out of a shift, smoking a cigarette, he wrote “Don’t Cry”, which he promises is about service work. “I don’t think there are any lyrics about hospitality in there, but for me it’s about hospitality.” And, later, I ask what he means by a lyric about falling in love like it was 1917, but he has no idea. Worried about coming up with bullshit historical significance, “I tried to make it about the fucking wars and whatever was happening. I was like, ‘I have to change the lyric or I have to go with it.’ And I just went with it. It just felt right.”

Getting the feeling right is a key part of his ethos, and his writing’s ambiguity makes sense with how he crafts a song. “Usually I sit at the piano and guitar and wait for something to happen,” he says, adding that if he starts from an idea, it feels like the lyrics are “trying to be good, and I hate that.” Instead, he plays around with demos and samples, admitting that it comes with a few nonstarters. I take him at his word in that he doesn’t quite know where his songs come from — he’s passionate on the mic, and his charm is there no matter the subject. His usual answer to people asking what his songs are about is “I don’t know yet”. Only when he writes does the meaning start to form.

Some songs do pull from some specific inspirations, though. The sweeping “Kingdom of You & Me” is a love story, a nod to “being with someone and it being your world, and nothing else matter[ing].” The same goes for “1917”, where he pulls from George Orwell’s dystopian classic 1984 to write about “a couple, in their little bedroom, while the world’s going to shit outside and they’ve got each other.” And “Lay Low”, even if it isn’t about him, touches on a certain dejected masculinity that still believes in one’s own greatness. “You can beat the tide if you say so / You’re just another prick who won’t let go,” he sings over the gorgeous (and ridiculously hooky) chorus. You might never win, but it’s worth it to keep trying anyway.

Matt-Felix is down-to-earth in a way that I didn’t expect from his glowing, artsy music. We’re both 24, born six months apart. We both work in an often-frustrating restaurant. We compare backgrounds; he’s Italian and French, I’m Italian and Jewish (“The hair makes sense,” he tells me, and I could say the same to him). With a lot more songs in the works, he’s ready to hit the ground running in 2025. When I ask his future plans, his answer is just “100% more work.”

He’s been writing a lot more songs and has been playing mostly London gigs, including All Points East this past summer, and will headline The Grace in December as a cap-off for the year. “I just lose myself and I don’t really think about it that much,” he says of being on stage, preferring for he and his live band to keep things fresh and spontaneous. He’s saying no to any holiday songs this year, but he might demo something new at The Grace. Tentatively called “Everyone”, it runs through humanity’s common instincts and needs, including our bad ones.

This, if you’ll recall, is a rare instance where Matt-Felix is sure of a song’s meaning. But that doesn’t mean his more opaque songs like “1917” or “Don’t Cry” are lesser. Quite the opposite, actually, as there’s value in vagueness, like a Rorschach test that changes based on the listener. Or maybe it’s to be revealed at a later time. “It feels right,” he says about the lyric “Modernist sex like it’s 2021,” one of many striking images on the new EP. “When I sing it live it means something to me.”