For Matt Corby, life can be described as tragic magic.
An experience filled with ups and downs and brief moments that make people who they are.
As he gets ready to bring his Tragic Magic tour to Perth next month, Corby spoke with WAtoday about his newest album and the life moments that brought it to fruition.
Written at a time of life filled with personal loss and grief, Corby says it was a combination of experiences with fatherhood, friendship, death and isolation that brought the 13 tracks to life.
“My partner’s mum, who was very, very close to us, she was really sick with pancreatic cancer, and ended up passing away not too long after the diagnosis, and it was a really hard time for everyone,” he said.
“I guess, there’s this sort of pondering through the record, of your own mortality, and what it is to enjoy these brief moments that we have on earth.”
Corby says the album’s name Tragic Magic was a funny metaphor for life.
“Life is only valuable because it’s short and finite,” he said.
“It’s like we’re all destined for tragedy, but because of that, these experiences that we get of being able to see and feel, and love and all that stuff, that’s [what makes life valuable].”
With more than 15 years of songwriting and instrumental knowledge up his sleeve, Corby says the evolution of the music scene has allowed him to keep testing his musical limits.
“Music is like a free-for-all now. I remember growing up, and scenes were really clearly defined,” he said.
“[Either] you were into emo, you were into indie, you were into metal, or you were goth … and you stuck to your lane. Music has changed so much now, where kids are like, ‘Oh no, I love jazz, and I love pop, and I like orchestral music, and I like metal’, and then there’s a mesh of all those things.
“There’s so much crossover between all these genres now, and we’re getting really interesting hybrids of genre stuff across the spectrum of music, so it’s really cool.
“It’s a great time to be contributing to that spectrum.”
But don’t expect him to be listening to the latest tunes on the radio.
“I think I don’t like listening to really modern music, more so because I don’t really want to copy it,” he said with a laugh.
“Because I know if I hear something really catchy, it’ll get stuck in there, and what goes in must come out in some way. So, I think I try and be careful about what I feed my ears.”
Corby last played in Perth three years ago, but says it’s a place that holds plenty of good memories for him.
“I’ve been to Perth many, many times, one of my best mates is living there now, and I’ve got family over there as well, and the band Great Gables, they’re all Perth boys, and it’s always good to catch up with them when I’m in town,” he said.
While he doesn’t plan to hit the waves this visit, he does intend to hit some golf balls.
“I haven’t surfed in like six months, which is weird because I grew up surfing, but I’m middle-aged now, so I’ve kind of gotten into golf,” he said.
“I think I am going to take my clubs with me because there’s a little bit of time in each day before we get to sound check, so [I could] either sit around and go to a café and eat, or … walk around, and whack a few tiny balls into tiny holes.”
Despite this being his fourth album, Corby says he still gets nervous playing it to a crowd for the first time.
“It’s a little nerve-wracking going into a tur kind of blind with songs that you’ve never played … I think it actually gets trickier when you’re going in and out of an album cycle,” he said.
“When you’re young, before you make your first couple of records, you’re probably playing these songs live a bunch of times and workshopping them as you’re performing them in front of people.
“It might take you two or three years before you even cut the songs in a studio, whereas now at this point I’m like, the songs all start in the studio, and the first time you’re playing them is like, oh, okay, here’s a few thousand people, let’s see how this goes,”
Corby says he plans to cherry-pick songs from across the spectrum of his discography but promises fans one track will be in there.
“There’s definitely a few on this record that I’m looking forward to playing. We’ve been rehearsing and Big Ideas, sounds so cool, and it’s so fun to play. Also, I feel like Know-It All has sort of taken on a new life,” he said.
‘We’re going to throw in a couple of really old ones that we haven’t played for a while. I think we’re going to do this song Runaway, which we haven’t played for ages,” he said.
“Every time I’ve done a show in the last seven or eight years, there’s always like three or four people that are like ‘Play Runaway!’ so I think we’re going to chuck that in the set.”
A surprising feature on the album can be heard on the track Maggie where Corby uses a recording of a magpie in the intro.
While songwriting with friends, Corby heard the magpie call and immediately jumped on the piano to play alongside it.
“I was playing the melody on my right hand, just being like, what chords would work with that … then on the last chord that I played, the magpie bloody sang with me at the same time,” he said.
“We all looked at each other [in shock] … and then when we heard it back, we were all just like, that’s the intro to the song, that’s awesome.”
As for what the future holds, Corby says he plans to bring a smaller version of his show to regional towns across the country.
“I feel like everyone always just hits the major cities, and you know there are a lot of places in Australia that you can go and play music, and I think people would really appreciate you going there, and especially now because everything’s expensive,” he said.
“It’s hard on people to go and see a show, and I’m so appreciative of anyone that rocks up for these gigs because I know it’s tough times for everyone, and … art in general seems to be the first thing that kind of goes when times are tough.
“So it might be good to put on a run of shows at the end of the year and go and hit like a bunch of smaller communities and see what happens.”
Corby performs in Perth on June 4 at the Riverside Theatre.
