Interview: Coby Sultan zooms to the moon

Coby Sultan crumples melodies like balls of paper. And that’s a good thing. His voice crackles, emitting sparks and casting purple smoke into the night sky. Well, that’s certainly the experience one has when listening to his latest, “The Moon Song.” Waves crash against the craggy rock, evidenced with a guitar’s crystalline teardrops, and the beeping of a submarine’s sonar ping sets the stage for what is an emotional epoch and one for the ages. The creative choice to utilize such a metallic sound signifies “loneliness, a feeling of emptiness,” Sultan tells B-Sides & Badland.

Throughout the four-minute runtime, the singer-songwriter also retools voice messages and videos of himself, his ex-girlfriend, and friends back in the Netherlands. “They’re intricately mixed with some static and radio sounds fading in and out to give texture,” he says, “but the idea was to emphasize the theme of nostalgia and loss which are some of the main drivers of the lyrics.”

With an EP, titled Memories from Your Polaroids, in his back pocket, “The Moon Song” slots into summarizing his relationship with Margo through a self-described “clean lens,” he explains. “I had time to reflect, look back at things now that I wasn’t in it anymore, and recognize the nature of the relationship.”

Across the rest of the project, out this fall, Sultan roots the other songs in nostalgia and a “desire to go back to relive the best memories before things came crashing down on me. The other images also dive into themes like honesty and love, but they’re all a bit more direct, whereas ‘The Moon Song’ is a lot more abstract.”

Sultan, who first learned Tom Petty’s “Free Falling” by way of John Mayer at the Nokia Theatre on guitar, found himself taking six months to write “The Moon Song.” He shares, “Most stuff I write goes in the bin, never to be seen again. I wouldn’t say I’m a good lyricist, but I’m just good at filtering the good ideas and bad ideas that come into my head.”

His heart still bleeding and swollen, “The Moon Song” is one of many reminders of that relationship. He’s not necessarily healed — “It feels more like a bandaid put over a cut than anything. The wound itself is still very much there,” he says — but he is at the very least processing what happened in a considerable way.

Below, Sultan discusses not feeling good enough, sensory overload, and lessons learned.

Are you handling the fear of not feeling good enough better these days?

That fear is part of my inherent nature and therefore manifests itself in different areas of my life. When I’m in a relationship, it seems to be most triggered by this, and it makes its way to the surface really easily. Without another person to draw this out of me as in a relationship, I experience it in my work as an artist and in my work as a yoga teacher, and pretty much everywhere in my life.

You’ve said ‘The Moon Song’ also deals with the idea that love for someone never fully goes away. Do you find things like sights and smells take you back to the relationship when you least expect them to?

It’s super weird, but there’s a particular shade of blue that brings me back to that time period. The color of the shirt she’s wearing in the cover art.

What did you learn not only through this period of your life but through writing this record?

I learned about the power of change, growth, honesty. Change is hard, especially when it’s forced upon you. I didn’t choose to break up with Margo. I didn’t choose to stop feeling the love for soccer. I didn’t choose to go through any of what happened during that time. But it forced me to grow and adapt to life. The actual creation of the record taught me a lot about patience. Being creative in this way was literally 80 percent waiting around for something noteworthy to pop into my head.

What’s the hardest truth you’ve found in your life?

Life isn’t meant to be easy. We spend countless hours trying to make our lives more convenient, avoiding pain at all costs, but life is hard whether you want it to be or not. Pain, discomfort, suffering are all necessary components of being human. Learning to develop a healthy relationship to pain wherein you don’t avoid it but you simply observe can really change your life.

Why write the record through the lens of your ex’s Polaroid camera instead of your own?

I was never really into the whole Polaroid thing until we broke up. She used to take tons of photos throughout the relationship, and I never really wanted any of them. Now I have like a whole wall covered in them; it seemed more fitting to write through her lens rather than mine.

Follow Sultan on his socials: Instagram