ROUGH ONLINE ONE-ON-ONE WITH BELLE MT ABOUT NEW SINGLE 'HYDRA' & THE IMPORTANCE OF LEONARD COHEN'S SONG

ROUGH ONLINE:  So I see you're a fan of Leonard Cohen. Do you have a favourite Cohen song? And who else would you consider as an influence on your sound?

BELLE MT: Yes Cohen was the best. I love 'Everybody Knows', he nailed the lyric on that one. It has this amazing sense of tension and impending doom which builds and builds...”so we're all headed for disaster, but we don't really talk about it or have any semblance of an escape plan.” It was true in 1988 and its even more true today. Cool.

ROUGH ONLINE:  I'd like us to go back in time for a moment, specifically to when you picked up the guitar for the first time, or even to when you first started writing lyrics. Can you remember what you had written?

BELLE MT: The first time I picked up a guitar it was a standard right-handed acoustic and it took me 3 painful months to realise that playing left-handed was even an option. After I restrung it the other way, I was off raging through that early Oasis catalogue like nobody could stop me. The first lyrics I wrote had some unbelievably cringeworthy moments; I wrote a song called 'Canadian Friend' about a break up with a girl I dated in school, just as she was spending a lot of time with this new "Canadian friend" who I did not like the look of. That guy. From then on, I just kept writing and really caring about improving and becoming great. Those years when you know what good is, but you don't know how to do good. They're so frustrating, but also the most pivotal, fight through them and trust your own taste.

ROUGH ONLINE: Your music is profoundly touching. Lyrically what inspires you when you write songs?

BELLE MT: I feel like my process for writing a song just starts with me reaching around in the dark. I'll play until I stumble upon some chords which capture me and then start singing nonsense over them to find the melody and 9 times out of ten there will be a word amongst the nonsense which inspires the rest of the song. For the first half of the session writing 'Hollow' with our producer Femke, we were singing "told you I was Hollow" and trying to make sense of that. It sounds so lame and contrived when it comes in the first person. Then we had this chorus line "Lonely is her favourite place to be". It seems so obvious now, but we had to take a break and get some air before the penny dropped. The whole song had to be from my perspective as a helpless spectator in my own relationship, with a particular girl I had in mind. Suddenly it made sense and the rest came together in about 30 minutes.

ROUGH ONLINE: We absolutely love "Hydra." Is there an E.P or an L.P in the works?

BELLE MT: Thanks guys, we killed ourselves getting that one right and we're so happy with all of the messages we've been receiving from people around the world connecting with it and taking that journey in their headphones. We recorded ten songs in Nashville in July so we're working through them right now. It could go one of 3 ways at this point. We've been doing the regular single release model so far to give each song the attention it deserves, but maybe we'll switch to an EP or even an album with these 10 as the basis. It’s all up in the air right now, but whichever way they come out we're excited for you all to hear them.  

ROUGH ONLINE: Is there a tour coming up? Do you have any UK gig dates in the pipeline?

BELLE MT: We're playing at a festival in Europe in January and planning a London show for March. Sorry to be so vague but you've caught me right in the middle of the planning stage! We hope to tour Europe and the US in the next 18 months, performing live is what we love to do most of all.