Q: Hi! Can you introduce yourself to our readers?
A: Hi! I am Matt Blum from the Portland-based music project, An Invisible Jet. My debut album, An Invisible Album for My Invisible Friends, is releasing on April 21, 2023. I created this project in 2020 as a way to share my music with the world. I have been in bands most of my life prior to 2020, but when the pandemic hit, I started this project to produce and release music independently. I really enjoy the freedom that it has given me. If I want to record and release something, I can do it in a way that I think best represents the idea without conforming to the sound of a band.
Q: How would you describe your sound to someone who’s not heard your music before?
A: My music is heavy on guitar melodies. For most of my songs, I use the guitar as a driving force to progress the song and tell the story. A lot of the bands that I admire from my youth, such as the Pixies, Dinosaur Jr., Built to Spill, and the Smashing Pumpkins, all use the guitar in interesting ways to drive their music. This coming release is heavily influenced by 90s/early 2000s alternative. My future releases will probably sound pretty different from this one, but I think the prominent guitar melodies will help identify my sound overall.
Q: You recently released your new single, can you tell us what the song is about?
A: The song ”Jomamma” started as kind of an in-joke with one of my old bands, Wounded Soldier. People used to make these silly “your mamma” jokes back then without really thinking about how absurd the premise was. You had these pop-culture representations at the time, like the song “Stacy’s Mom” by Fountains of Wayne or the character “Stiffler’s Mom,” from the American Pie movies, and there was this weird infatuation with seeing a friend’s mom as a romantic interest. So the song is about asking what if it wasn’t a joke and the intent was sincere? What would that conversation look like?
Q: When did you realize that you wanted to become a musician?
A: This realization came to me at an early age. I think I got my first guitar at thirteen years old and taught myself to play. From that point forward, I was obsessed with writing songs and riffs. A lot of the rock bands at the time, like Nirvana, and Weezer, had some pretty simple song structures that I would try to emulate. There was this soft verse, a hard chorus that a lot of bands employed at the time. As I have matured as a songwriter, I learned that you want to keep elements of that simplicity but layer it with more complicated elements and build toward a payoff. You give the listener something that seems easy to follow to rope them in while continuing to throw more complicated and surprising ideas as the song progresses.
Q: What inspires you the most to write your songs?
A: Usually an idea will come to me as a starting point and I will just work on it and try new things until I finish it. It may be a guitar line or the idea for a vocal melody that I think is interesting. If I am busy, I will usually do a quick voice memo to preserve the idea to come back to later. Then I will lay it down in my home studio and just try different ideas until I think I have found something.
Or sometimes I will get ideas for concepts to explore. For example, I was at the gym last year and the song “Tootsie Roll.” by the 69 Boyz came on and I got the idea to cover it as an experimental noise piece. As I developed that concept more, I came up with the idea to release an EP of covers that transforms the genre of the original song, which I am currently recording.
Lyrically I am typically drawn to abstract topics. I may start with something that has personal meaning to me, but I like songs where there can be multiple interpretations for it. If the listener can find their own meaning in the song, that is what is important.
Q: Who would be your ultimate dream collaboration with, and why?
A: I would probably have to pick someone that can do things vocally that I can’t do. I just did a recent interview where I gave Weyes Blood as an answer to a similar question. Someone like that, or maybe Let’s Eat Grandma. I would never be able to replicate their vocal contributions on my own, and the clash of different songwriting styles might create something truly interesting.
Q: If there’s one song from your catalog that you wish everyone in the world could listen to, which one would it be?
A: I would probably pick my song Believer right now. I think the song is very accessible and the meaning resonates with me personally. The song is about how little we know as humans, which I think we often lose sight of. It is OK to believe something, but we can become so attached to the belief that we close ourselves off to opportunities and others. In my opinion, this is causing a lot of problems in our world. I may not have the exact answer on how we can solve problems as a society, but I believe that we can do better and am willing to change if that mean
