Matt Corby is a conduit for the stories that he tells through songs. With the release of his debut album ‘Telluric’, the story he is telling is finally his own.
After entering the manic world of commercial music at the impressionable age of 16 via television show ‘Australian Idol’, Matt has always taken the road less travelled. His attention-avoidant choices have resulted in industry accolades, international tours and entry into places many artists dream about but can never access.
At the beginning of his career, this shaggy-haired storyteller captivated gaggles of school girls with his wide-eyed good looks and contemplative crooning, but along the way started attracting a different type of crowd.
Matt’s fan base became filled with people who yearned to feel something, who were seeking a glimpse into another world and who wanted to be reminded what it felt like to be alive. Matt’s music invited them to step into the spectrum of human emotions and experience life from the inside out. His listeners were faced towards their pain, welcomed into their joy and asked to be still and go slow. In today’s frantic, frenetic world, this is akin to demanding people to stop scrolling social media as a spectator and start experiencing life as a participant.
‘Telluric’ is not a party album or a collection of hit songs. Rather, it is an audio adventure through time and space and demands your attention to observe and absorb its intricacies and intimacies. Answering questions over the phone, Matt’s voice is quiet, slightly hesitant and he pauses often to consider his answers. Not necessarily to censor, but to contemplate; he genuinely appears earnest in his attempts to explain himself and his music.
He laughs often and recounts funny and awkward moments he has had on the way to the album’s final version. He explains that he is standing outside in the snow, holding a coffee and trying to find a place where the reception is dependable and he can hear the conversation clearly.
After painting the picture of his surrounds, the conversation continues on about the relationship between visuals and music. “All our senses are tied together and it’s why I think you should have a visual experience when something audible is happening if your imagination is working.
“For me, I’ll be making a song and if it sounds like John fucking Wayne is walking down the street on cocaine then I think, ‘cool, alright we’ve got something, let’s expand on this’.”
And thus begins the process for this singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. Song creation is intuitive for Matt and something he struggles to articulate. “With almost every single song you have an idea – kind of – and you have something you want to convey – kind of – and you start to do things and you may get further and further away from your original intention. But really you’re not, because that’s the way your mind or your body works or the way that you feel things.
“All these songs, there was no way I would hear a whole song straightaway in my head and reproduce that. There are times that I have tried to do that, but you can cap yourself and stop the creative process. The lyrics usually come last for me, I try to find a melody and a story and then I try to figure what the fuck I should say.”
The first single off the album, ‘Monday’, starts with a finger click as a metronomic beat. Matt explains how that particular song came into being. “I was actually taking the piss out of myself by trying to sing these old, Gregorian-chant-style vocals and had this crazy, booming reverb going on in my headphones.
“Then I thought: ‘This reverb is amazing and sounds like we’re in a monastery,' so [I] made that loop and then created harmonies from that loop. And the clicks were something I did to keep it all in time. It was going to be a whole song built around that simple idea, but that song just became that simple idea. I set out to become something completely different and I ended up with an a cappella song.”
Showcasing the restraint that has made Matt an artist to watch, he commented casually: “I think it’s an important thing to know once you have gotten to a place that feels good, to acknowledge it and go, ‘ok no more. Don’t touch it, it’s fragile. I don’t need to do anything else to this. It’s perfect as it is right now.’”
As you listen to ‘Monday’, it’s almost as though the air starts vibrating with a luminosity, and from the opening finger click to the synoptic vocals, this song becomes richer on each listen. Matt acknowledges this has become quite an emotional song for him. “‘Monday’ is one of those songs that when I heard it back, I didn’t know what to think. I was actually quite overwhelmed. It was a song I wrote in five minutes and it’s better than most of songs I’ve spent weeks on. It just came out and did its thing around us. I know this sounds really fucking lame, but I still get this welling up of emotion inside where this voice inside me goes ‘you know what, you were as honest as you can be, that’s who you are in a song’.
“And it’s funny as a few people that are really close to me, they’ve said the same thing when they heard this song. They’re like ‘dude it actually sounds like the person you are'. And I think that’s so fucking cool. That’s all anyone tries to do when they make art, they’re trying to explain themselves or what they’re experiencing. It feels good that people picked up on that.”
If you haven’t yet had a listen, ‘Telluric’ could be described as atmospheric, otherworldly and celebratory, and swings from expansive and hymn-like to upbeat soul and bluesy folk. It fits into a myriad of genres and at times, almost defies a category. Having only recently released the album, not much feedback has filtered back to Matt yet. “I haven’t heard much about the album yet. So every bit that I hear makes me thankful that people like it.
"I just think it’s hard to be objective about what you do, you just think you’re crazy. There are so many people making music and I think ‘why the fuck should anyone listen to what I do over all these other talented people?’”
As an artist, a debut album is a massive marker in your career trajectory, but Matt is hesitant to amplify its importance, viewing himself as more of a custodian of the ideas and melodies rather than the outright creator. “I don’t quite know how I feel about the album anymore,” he frankly admits.
“When I finished it about six months ago, I was really worried because I forgot my place in the world. You forget that you’re just a little ant walking around thinking you’re intelligent, with a bunch of other ants thinking they're intelligent and I became caught up in my own head.”
Then he pauses, chuckles and adds: “I’m worried but I’m glad that I’m worried rather than being complacent. I was honest with this album, I was vulnerable and expressed the ideas that are true for me and that set the course for who I am. It’s a challenging thing to say all of that publicly through my music and put yourself out there stating so baldly ‘this is how I feel, who I am and these problems and ideas are mine’.
“I want to be pushing myself to do things that are right at the edge of my comfort zone. That means I’m being as expressive as I can as that’s my job as a songwriter."
‘Telluric’ is out now.
Matt Corby Tour Dates
Mon 11 Apr - Enmore Theatre (Sydney)Tue 12 Apr - Enmore Theatre (Sydney)
Wed 13 Apr - Enmore Theatre (Sydney)
Sun 17 Apr - Civic Theatre (Newcastle)
Mon 18 Apr - Llewellyn Hall (Canberra)
Wed 20 Apr - QPAC Theatre (Brisbane)
Thu 28 Apr - Thebarton Theatre (Adelaide)
Sat 30 Apr - Palais Theatre (Melbourne)
Sun 1 May - Palais Theatre (Melbourne)
Mon 2 May - Palais Theatre (Melbourne)
Thu 5 May - Riverside Theatre (Perth)
