Mobile Chateau began to take shape during a tour break in France in 2009.  While Matt was hanging out near Tulle, songs just started pouring out of him—and they didn’t stop.  By the time he got to Paris, he was armed with a strong clutch of tunes, but he wasn’t anywhere near finished.  A day spent wandering through the Orsay Museum yielded the gentle folk ballad “Painted Face.”

All of the songs were influenced by the passing of Costa’s uncle, who had been a guiding light during his formative years. “It’s the one that turned me onto all the music that I’m into now,” Costa divulges.  “Mobile Chateau is a result of his guidance, because he steered me on the right track to the right bands.  So I wanted to make sure that these songs honored him.  I feel that records are messages from the other side, so it seemed a fitting way to do that.”

The first recording sessions for Mobile Chateau took place at Brushfire Record’s studio in LA during March of 2009.  For the first time, Costa took over the production duties himself.  “Each of my albums was recorded differently, so I wanted to make another extreme departure when I went in to record this one,” Costa explains.  “I take each recording session as an opportunity to grow.”

To help with his latest experiment, he recruited a completely new band to back him up.  The Mothers Sons are a Southern California collective made up for Rob Rowe (guitar/bass), Kenny Bender (guitar/bass), Danny Garcia (guitar/bass), and Jona Wilder (drums).  For each new recording, the band would switch up their instruments to keep the sessions feeling fresh.

With Brushfire’s in-house engineer Robert Carranza lending a hand on these initial recordings, Costa laid down a handful of tracks, including what would become the first single, the trad pop tune ‘Witchcraft.’  “That was a catalyst,” Costa declares.  “As soon as I got that on tape, I knew I was onto something.  It’s actually a very traditional song, in the sense that it’s just about how women have this mystic power.”

Despite his breakthrough, Costa wasn’t yet getting the sound of the songs in his head on tape, so he took a break and ultimately set up camp in Santa Ana, California at Pheasant Studios.  “I wanted to take a much more raw approach to the recording,” Costa admits. “I wanted to add a haziness to the songs, so you couldn’t tell if it was recorded in a giant church or a tin can.  This leaves room for the listener to imagine them however they want.” The new surroundings were the perfect compliment to Costa’s vision and recording began in earnest in July of 2009, lasting until March of 2010.

Working with his new backing band and feeling his way as a producer and engineer, Costa pushed himself to create an otherworldly quality to his songs.  “I wanted to make sure that I had a lot of strange effects to add some eerie qualities to the softer elements I’ve done before,” he says.  You can hear those space oddities intertwined with the Beach Boys sunshine pop of “Drive” and the Byrds-on-acid slink of “Next Time.”

After the recording wrapped up, Mobile Chateau was mixed by Phil Ek (Band of Horses, Fleet Foxes, Built To Spill).  The title came from an image that kept dancing through Costa’s head.  “Mobile Chateau is about creating a movable feast where you bring all of your friends along for a good time,” he reveals.  “But it also refers to the image of a manmade mobile hovering in a room above you.  Whatever happens - maybe a breeze comes in and spins it around - you’re always looking at the same vision, but in different ways.”

No matter how you look at Mobile Chateau, it’s an extraordinary vision.  It’s a trip and a tribute, a revelation and a reverie.  You may think you know Matt Costa, but this is a stirring reminder that he’s always changing.

With the October 2nd, 2007 release of Unfamiliar Faces, his second on Jack Johnson’s Brushfire Records, Costa mines his imagination once again, crafting an ambitious collection of songs that explore themes of love, loss and fear. From the piano-driven opener “Mr. Pitiful” to the title-track, Unfamiliar Faces traverses musical styles drawing on elements of pop, country, folk and rock resulting in an
effortlessly intoxicating musical experience.

Even for the fully initiated, Matt Costa is an enigma – a 25 year old, former skateboarder whose words and music recall some of the great troubadours of our time. Costa credits his diverse musical palette to the freedom and improvisation he experienced skating. “Any instrument that allows you the freedom to be creative, whether it be a skateboard or a canvas, it’s all a tangible way of discovering yourself,” says Costa.

Songs We Sing is a winding collection, running the stylistic and historic gamut of pop music; hues of ragtime, folk, psychedelia, country, and rock are cast liberally across the album. Songs We Sing recalls a time when America was under the spell of such UK imports as Donovan and Van Morrison. The man responsible for this throwback to simpler times is 23 year-old Matt Costa.