Scuzz by Mats Wawa

Mats Wawa plays the most soulful and naïve rock music you’ll ever hear in 2018.

Mats Wang had never played with anyone else, and almost not written any songs, when he was booked to the Trondheim Calling festival in 2015. You might almost say he was thrown into it, and after a very short time, the band Mats Wawa was formed. Their debut album from 2016 showed a band that had found the essence of blue-eyed and naïve indie pop, and also the rougher and more psychedelic sides of rock, but who continued trying out different genres to find a recurrent theme in their sound.

Then soul music made its entry into their rehearsal space, and the songs on «Scuzz» started to take shape. Mats himself says: «I’ve been inspirerd a lot by old soul music lately, and recently I bought an old Harmony guitar with gold foils that really wants to play soul music. Soul music of the type that the people from The Daptones are playing. All the songs on «Scuzz» were made on it, and I think both the rhythm and the strumming patterns are a lot inspired by that guitar. I don’t think these songs could have been made on another guitar.» 

«Scuzz» is their first release on Black Pop Records, and the four songs show a band that have taken distinct steps towards a direction that suits them very well. They’ve got a lot of inspiration from old heroes like The Rolling Stones, The Kinks and George Harrison, but at the same time the naïve pop songs that Mats Wawa have become known for are always their foundation.

The record has been produced by Rick Ashtray’s guitarist, Petter Haugen Andersen, who has given the EP a simple, rough and retro sound.