Ra Ra Riot's Mathieu Santos Shares New Single 'Suzanne'

10-23-2024

(Stunt Co) Following the release of the ebullient "Cutting Up an Ox," his first new song in over a decade, Ra Ra Riot co-founder and bassist Mathieu Santos is back with "Suzanne" today, another single from his forthcoming studio album Fan Fiction. The song is now available on all major streaming platforms and the album will be out November 11th.

Santos explains the genesis of the track: "I wrote the whole thing, lyrics and all, very, very quickly - within a few hours during a hike up in Beacon, NY, where I was living at the time - shortly after meeting my now wife. We were living across the country from each other, and I was just feeling all of those special feelings and wanted to bang out a simple little three-chord love song with as little second-guessing as possible. (The final vocals are actually the very first take from the demo!) The lyrics, the repetition of her name, were meant to kind of make fun of myself, and how annoying I felt like I was being at the time by constantly talking about her to everyone. But it also plays off of those first feelings in a relationship, where you're just kind of helplessly infatuated; I wanted to really lean into that. It really felt like my whole life was changing. And it did."

Fan Fiction, Santos's second solo offering after 2011's lo-fi and idiosyncratic Massachusetts 2010, is a heady blend of self-conscious pastiche and New Sincerity's bright-eyed earnestness. Some of its ten original songs had first been written over a decade ago. "I had so much fun making the record, even though it took about ten years longer than I had expected," Santos says. "I'm just so excited to finally get it out into the world."