There are several dichotomies that characterize Cincinnati singer/songwriter Maurice Mattei’s new album, Never Die Ever Again, the third installment in his de facto man-with-a-guitar trilogy. Mattei’s writing process was comfortably consistent and yet distinctly different; his songs are completely contemporary yet presented in a design format literally borrowed from the 1960s, and he has eschewed his avowed love of odd numbers by offering an even dozen songs on Never Die Ever Again.
“I was going to include a hidden track, but decided not to because I wanted to keep it like an old country or pop album to fit with the cover,” says Mattei over Cokes on the patio of Poppy’s in Cheviot. “So it’s six songs a side and that’s it.”
As noted, the design aesthetic of Never Die Ever Again isn’t just a homage to the ’60s style guide for album covers, it’s a dead lift. The front cover is adapted from the actual artwork from John Gary’s 1965 release When Irish Eyes Are Smiling, and the back cover design comes from one of Mattei’s personal favorites, the George Jones/Melba Montgomery debut duet album, 1963’s Singing What’s in Our Hearts. Both albums were acquired during Mattei’s crate-digging expeditions at the West Side St. Vincent De Paul store.
“I’m fascinated by the covers in the ’60s, before they got all arty,” says Mattei, also a photographer and designer by trade. “I found the John Gary album and bought it for the cover, then I Photoshopped my head on him. I Photoshopped out his type and put in mine, but in the same style — Helvetica and titles on the side. The back didn’t fit right so I used the back of the George Jones/Melba Montgomery album. They look great together, and I kept it weathered so it looks like it came out of a secondhand store.”
“Weathered” is a good adjective for Mattei’s songs. His characters are careworn and weary, victims of bad luck, bad choices or a combination of both. His spare acoustic guitar accompaniment — particularly on his last four solo albums; 2017’s Jealous Wreck, 2019’s Velvet Lined Room, 2023’s double set Jungalingle and Never Die Ever Again — serves to heighten the atmosphere. Mattei has devised an apt description for the songwriting style that has driven most, if not all, of his band and solo releases.
“You have method acting, where the actor inhabits the character, like Daniel Day Lewis or Brando,” says Mattei. “Well, this is method songwriting, in the sense that I get into that character’s persona and write as that character. ‘A Week and a Day’ is a classic case. I’m not really that person. I try to inhabit what that person does. It’s touching, in a way. You see that person’s whole life in three verses.”
“A Week and a Day” is among many high points on Never Die Ever Again. The track exemplifies Mattei’s best qualities — deft acoustic guitar work and his irresistible lyrical gift, which can be, at turns, hilarious (he works a Swisher Sweets reference into “Home Wrecker”) or heartbreaking. “A Week and a Day” examines a man who is addicted to the front row at strip clubs, who self-describes his problem as having “a head for figures.” And when he finds he can’t stay away even with a preacher’s help, he says, “Found a club in the yellow pages/Full’a workin’ girls dancing in cages.”
If Never Die Ever Again is the final arc in a trilogy (Jealous Wreck also features just Mattei and an acoustic guitar, but is exempt since it was studio recorded with producer Mike Tittel; the last three were home recorded by Mattei and his son Alex), Mattei sees clear differences in each similarly constructed works. He previously noted that Velvet Lined Room had been a little lighter, while Jungalingle, which was massaged and shaped during the Covid lockdown, was a good deal darker, so Never Die Ever Again strikes a balance between its predecessors.
“I think this is kind of a black comedy,” Mattei says with a laugh. “It’s got funny things in it, but there’s some darkness. ‘A Week and a Day’ is a funny song, but it’s dark because this guy just can’t resist going to strip clubs. And ‘Hang a Right’ was a last-minute addition. I wasn’t sold on it and I wasn’t going to put it on, but I thought, ‘Well, I do need a bit of an uptempo number here,’ so I threw it in there. I do like the story and the rhyme scheme, and I think it fits the album really well.”
It’s always been easy to draw a line between Mattei and Bob Dylan. Mattei understands there are answers contained in a blowing wind, and sometimes twists of fate are simple, but their consequences are often fiendishly complex. With Never Die Ever Again, Mattei has found another gear, combining his inherent musicology with Van Dyke Parks aplomb, and sharpening his lyrical focus with Randy Newman’s sardonic whetstone.
“It has that edge to it, although it’s nothing I could chart out,” says Mattei. “I have a lot of Randy Newman records, and I like his stories and his characters.”
The shift in Mattei’s writing process may be one of the clearest differences in Never Die Ever Again. Adhering to his standard two-to-three-month writing period, there was an added wrinkle when he began experiencing arthritic pain in his hands that limited his guitar playing.
“I sat on the songs for a while this time around, more than I usually do,” Mattei notes. “Part of that was because I couldn’t play some of them like I could or should, especially for recording. It’s all acoustic, so you can’t hide. So I had to wait until I could pull it off, and I was still struggling a little but it was good because it actually got me to listen to the songs more. Writing is a little strange. You write a song but then you have to learn it in a way, and sometimes it takes on various forms that you didn’t expect. If you don’t sit on it for a while, you’ll just perform it the way you initially wrote it, and that’s not always good.”
Another shift in Mattei’s writing process came with the album’s final track, “Thankful.”
“That was actually a poem I wrote a year or two ago,” Mattei recalls. “I really liked it so I added music to it, which I never do. I start with a title, and it all happens simultaneously. I had to add a couple of verses because it was too short, but I really like the tune. It’s a nice closer.”
If there’s any doubt that Mattei can draw inspiration from just about any source, consider the story of how he came up with the album’s title.
“I don’t know exactly how this started, but my son and I were trying to think of a new James Bond movie title,” Mattei says. “And I said, ‘What about Never Die Ever Again?’ This was like three years ago. I’ve had that lying around and I thought, ‘I’ve got to have an album that’s called that.’ It’s kind of pertinent because some of the songs deal with death. It kind of makes sense.”
Never Die Ever Again is available at Shake It Records, Everybody’s Records and mmattei.com. Mattei will continue celebrating the album’s release at Arnold’s Bar & Grill on Saturday, Oct. 25.
This story is featured in CityBeat’s Oct. 15 print edition.