LIVERPOOL SOUND CITY ARTIST SPOTLIGHT: Dea Matrona

Words: Izzi Glover

Dark, deep and twisted. Dea Matrona have an enchantment like no other, spellbinding everyone in their path with their magical music. Set to release their second album, Hate That I Care, they are guiding the way for females everywhere, touching on themes of love, hate and strong emotions. We sat with vocalist, Orláith Forsythe, to discuss Liverpool, St. Patrick’s Day, and animals with swagger. 

Q: What is your favourite thing about Liverpool?

O: Every time we play in Liverpool, there’s just so many Irish people there. I always call it the 33rd county of Ireland because it’s great. And, probably the people; they’re just really friendly. It feels like a home away from home, I think. 

Q: You’ve announced your new album coming out in June. What can you tell us about it and what can we expect from it? 

O: This is our second album, so we’ve really, really enjoyed working on it, and we released the first single, Hate That I Care, this month, from the album. We chose that as the title track because it really sums up a lot of the themes in the album, kind of feeling like you can be a little bit of an outcast at times, and you hate that you care so much about things, and a few of the songs definitely reflect that feeling. But in terms of the album as a whole, it’s maybe darker than the first album, in terms of like, sonically and some of the emotions. Some parts are a bit light-hearted as well, you know? We’re just really excited for it to come out.

Q: Have you got any highlights or fun stories from your Europe tour? 

O: There was one day that a passport went missing! We were just about to get a flight from Madrid to Barcelona, and one of the group lost one of the passports in an Uber, and we didn’t get it back for ages, and we weren’t sure if we were gonna be able to do the show that night, but it turned up, everything was fine about four hours later, and they got the train over to Barcelona. That was crazy, that was probably the craziest thing that happened. 

Q: Did you have a good St. Patrick’s Day? 

O: Yeah we did. We were in Berlin. It was really fun; some people in the crowd brought these, like, signs and everything. I don’t know if they do St. Patrick’s Day in Berlin, but it was really nice. 

Q: Red Button is about female rage. What’s the one thing in day to day life that fills you with the most female rage? 

O: I don’t like when you’re on a plane, and there’s a guy sat beside you and they just, like, push their legs everywhere. That really fills me with a lot of rage because I have quite long legs as well, so, you know, I want to have some leg room as well. That’s what comes to mind first, I’m sure there’s deeper things, but it’s probably because I’ve been on so many planes recently.

Q: In Magic Spell you say ‘she walks with the swagger of a black cat.’ What’s another animal that you think has a lot of swagger?

I feel like swans. Swans have a lot of swagger. We’ve been on about this recently; swans are kind of scary as well, so maybe they have a bit of female rage. They hiss, they can be scary, but they can be so majestic, like when you see a swan on a lake. ‘You have the swagger of a swan’, it even goes, you know? Swans. Cats. Birds, like a peacock. But swans are so beautiful, they even have Swan Lake, a ballet after them. No other bird has a ballet after them, that I know of. 

Q: Why should people come and watch Dea Matrona at Sound City? 

O: They should come and see us at Sound City because we’ve never played Sound City before, and I’ve heard a lot of great things about it. Number two: because we absolutely love Liverpool, and we have the best time there, always. And, I think we’re gonna be playing some new songs from the album as well, so come and check that out. It would be great to see everybody there. 

Buy tickets to Liverpool Sound City here.