True Colours

It's surprisingly difficult to put Jonah Matranga in a box. Without ever having made genre-splicing a huge priority within his work, his career has crossed a lot of different boundaries. He's perhaps still best known for his work with Sacramento outfit Far in the nineties – whose expansive, anthemic sound would prove a key influence on what would eventually become modern post-hardcore and emo (and more cerebral nu-metal acts like Deftones).

“Yeah, I think that's great. I try not to take ideas of influence or importance too seriously because I think that's just an express ticket to turning into an asshole but I'm very grateful,” Matranga says of his influence. “Put it this way, I know how much music means to me and how much my favourite bands have meant to me personally and artistically. For me to mean that to anyone is just amazing.”

However, since then, he's earned acclaim as an experimental folk artist (most famously as onelinedrawing – whose work has influenced Frank Turner, among countless other singer/songwriters) while also moonlighting as a writer and occasional guest-vocalist with heavy duty commercial acts like Lupe Fiasco, Taproot and Linkin Park side project Fort Minor. It's a weird mix. “It's all a mess, really,” he laughs.

“Really, though, there's just been onelinedrawing, New End Original – which was just onelinedrawing songs with a band – and then Gratitude was another band. Really, I think I'm always doing the same thing and other people just bring different things to each project. I'm just trying to make things that are exciting to me and see if anyone else likes it.

“Neil Young said something brilliant, among all the brilliant things he said, something like he's only written three songs and the rest of his career has just been kind of bad imitations of those songs – and I couldn't agree more,” the singer laughs. “I think there's these sort of little shapes that I make and, if I make a slow song or something, it will feel like another song I've written. It's just pop music, though. To me it's about having fun.”

And now he's bringing his onelinedrawing project to Australia. Originally retired in 2004 when he began to perform under his own name, Matranga almost arbitrarily revived the project earlier this year. In a way, it's a project that seems to most sum up Matranga's character as an artist. It's goofy and frivolous (it began with Matranga playing acoustic gigs with an R2D2 tapedeck) but deeply affecting, unpredictable and honest. “All I know is – I've played over two thousand shows at this point and I've never played the same set twice,” he says proudly. “A show can be whatever we want it to be. It can be pretty screamy and exciting or it can be really sweet and soft or it can be really silly or it can be really serious. It can go any number of ways. All I really want from people who come to my shows is to come in with an open mind about what a rock show can be.

“You know, I think rock shows that adhere to those specific expectations of what a rock show should be are really sad,” he laughs. “Really, I just want us all to leave there feeling a little bit more humble, a little bit more human and just a little bit more alive, really. It'll be fun. I'm really looking forward to it.”

Jonah Matranga will be playing the following shows:

Thursday 6 September - Sandringham Hotel, Sydney NSW
Friday 7 September - The Cambridge Hotel, Newcastle NSW
Sunday 9 September - Workers Club, Melbourne VIC
Wednesday 12 September - The Academy, Amplifier, Perth WA
Saturday 15 September - Crowbar, Brisbane QLD