God bless Canada’s Colour Film, it is such a relief to not have to correct the spelling – yeah we’re Americana but don’t cha’ ever forget the UK bit of the name, y’hear y’all? Anyway. Colour Film is the alt-folk project that serves as the pseudonym of Hamilton, Ontario singer-songwriter Matthew de Zoete – a band name he has used since 2016. Today’s song is taken from the new album ‘Half An Hour’, which was actually recorded just prior to the pandemic in January 2020, and then further delayed following an injury de Zoete suffered that almost derailed his music career completely. ‘Saturday Night Somewhere Else’ takes a light folk-pop approach to some pretty searching questions and probing philosophies. There’s a suggestion, certainly, that one doesn’t really want to say yes to any of the opening lines: “do you live with the feeling that things are going south? / do you live in the basement of someone else’s house? / do you live for the weekend ? / do you live with the memory of what you used to be? / do you live like an actor for your family? / do you live through your best friend?” And really what are most people going to come up with? But, hey, don’t worry, Colour Film are not so oblivious of the reality of life – they’re suffering much the same: “and everyone tells themself / I’m just having fun when I drink myself to oblivion / oblivion / because it’s Saturday night somewhere else.” Yeah, so that’s a consolation we guess – we’re all messed up to some degree.
Matthew de Zoete says, “When writing, I try to find a space between letting a song come to me and working to track it down. Call it being actively open or receptive with a focus. It doesn’t always work, but I think it did with this batch of songs. I wouldn’t say there is any explicit theme, other than an honest exploration of life—the details on the surface and the larger currents below.”
