Scott Matthew

As I promised yesterday, today we'll be examining the life and career of Australian Scott Matthew. Just one letter short of yesterday's name, but just as talented.

Scott William Matthew was born in Queensland, Australia. He worked in various Brisbane Punk Rock groups, before relocating to Sydney where he formed Nicotine. He moved to New York City in 1997. Matthew was a member of the Alternative Pop band Elva Snow (2001–2006), which he co-founded with ex-Morrissey backing band member Spencer Cobrin. Two songs from their self-titled debut album, which had Matthew on vocals and Cobrin on drums, piano, guitar and composition, were included in film soundtracks. Hold Me was in 2004's The Last Run, directed by Jonathan Segal and starring Fred Savage & Amy Adams, and Could Ya appeared in the 2005 film Splinter, directed by Kai Maurer. Here's Hold Me:

... And here's Could Ya:

Another beautiful song from Elva Snow is Pavement Kisses:

After the dissolution of Elva Snow, Matthew performed with the band Songs to Drink and Drive By, under the free-base mp3 label Comfort Stand. But it was in 2006, when John Cameron Mitchell's followup to the classic Hedwig & The Angry Inch came out, that Scott achieved wide recognition. Shortbus was a bold, sexually explicit indie comedy, which managed to be funny and profound in equal measure, feeling like a 21st century version of a Samuel Beckett play.

Matthew wrote and performed 5 of the film's songs: Upside Down, Surgery, Language, Little Bird and In the End (Acoustic). His haunting acoustic songs, Language in particular, gave the film a kind of bruised, wistful tone, his breathy voice and gentle ukulele shading in the spaces between the characters. Here's Language:

Language wasn't included in his debut solo album, simply titled Scott Matthew (2008), but the other 4 Shortbus songs were. Allmusic's reviewer, Pemberton Roach, described Matthew's "quivering, otherworldly" singing and his "gentle, melancholic" songwriting with the album displaying his "enigmatic voice and tales of existential woe gently supported by a bed of tinkling piano ('Surgery'), softly plucked ukulele ('Little Bird'), vibes ('Amputee'), and muted horns ('In the End')".

Here's exquisite opening track Amputee:

Here's beautiful Little Bird:

Here's another beautiful track, Surgery:

And here's In the End, my favorite track from this record:

His 2nd solo album came out in 2009. This one's title was on the other end of the spectrum compared to the first one: There Is An Ocean That Divides and With My Longing I Can Charge It With a Voltage That’s So Violent to Cross It Could Mean Death. Contactmusic's reviewer found "the minor guitar chords and sad sounding piano, along with Matthew's gloomy vocals set a melancholic tone". This is definitely true. Fortunately, I love melancholic music.

The opening track, Every Traveled Road, sets the mood perfectly:

I love the 2nd track, called For Dick, despite (or because of) its bleakness. Here are the lyrics:

What have we made

Besides an early grave

We didn't resurrect

on the third day

And this middle age

Well it couldn't save

The wonder of this lot

Still it won't stop

So put me to pasture

Send me to slaughter

harden your heart

To the truth

Put me to pasture

Send me to slaughter

Now that I'm past tense to you

And here's the song:

Next track is Ornament:

I've taken drugs , I've taken sides

The devil taught me alibis

Now you've seen all that I'll never be

It thrills me 'cause you're still not leaving

Here's the title track:

On 10 June 2011 his third album, Gallantry's Favorite Son, was issued. Franziska Meissner of Farrel Magazine extolled Matthew's release as it "delivers once well-known: Incredibly soft and incredibly haunting melodies simultaneously".

In one of the interviews that he gave in order to promote the album's release, he talks about being gay, his move from Australia to New York and other interesting things, Here it is:

In another interview, for Next Magazine, the album’s first single, The Wonder of Falling in Love is discussed:

The song’s gently ambling euphoria has the feeling of a musical number, a stroll in the sunshine, cartoon birds chirping at your shoulder. “A thousand million butterflies make me smile/I fear the boy’s falling in love,” Matthew sings.

“I kind of wrote it as affirmation,” he says. “Because when I wrote that song I wasn’t [in love]. I thought, ‘Oh, I’m sick of writing all these really tragic sad songs.’ And, lo and behold, it worked!” Matthew stops short of crediting the song entirely for his current state of romantic bliss, however. “I don’t know if it has that power, but it’s a nice story, isn’t it?” Here it is:

From the same interview:

Gallantry isn’t a complete departure. There are still songs to break your heart, like opener Black Bird and Sinking, songs that aim for the part of us that’s waiting for something, longing for something. “I find it very, very easy to express emotion, and to not fear that,” says Matthew. “It’s something I’m very comfortable with, and I feel like I get power from it more than vulnerability.”

But that comfort with emotional honestly may be in part responsible for earning Matthew a label he wholeheartedly rejects: “androgynous.” “I think that’s false. It’s offensive and perhaps even homophobic,” he says. “Just because a man expresses emotion doesn’t make him androgynous, does not make him something between man and woman.”

And while it may not be unfair to expect melancholy from Matthew, sadness may not be quite the word for the emotions he’s trying to elicit. “The last thing I want to do is make people genuinely depressed,” he says. “That’s not what I want to achieve at all. For me it’s kind of a bit of therapy. But it’s also… you kind of get a sense of hope, even, from it. When I was a kid, growing up in the bush in Australia, I needed something to kind of, like, get me through it. Music is one of those big tools. It gave me solace. So, in a way, I always want my music to kind of do the same. It does that for me, but I’d also like it to do that for other people as well.”

Here's Black Bird:

... And here's Sinking:

His next album, Unlearned (2013), was a departure for him: it was an album of highly eclectic covers. Just reading the songlist makes you tip your hat to this man for choosing such different, yet constantly wonderful songs. Highlights include his duet with Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy on Charlie Chaplin's Smile, his gorgeous cover of To Love Somebody, the tender duet with his father Ian Matthew on Help Me Make It Through The Night, Janis Ian's Jesse, The Jesus and Marry Chain's Darklands, & Neil Young's Harvest Moon. Here's opening track To Love Somebody:

Here's Smile:

Here's a live version of Help Me Make It Through The Night:

Here's Jesse, live in Munich:

The hallmark of this record, lies in the attention to the lyrics and how they were intimately set. Whitney Houston's I Wanna Dance With Somebody has been oft-recorded as of late. Artists as stylistically disparate as Matt Alber and Antony & The Johnsons have put their spin in the song, but there's nothing tongue and cheek about Matthew's version. Glossy, overproduced 80's sheen stripped away, the melancholic lyrics are pushed forward and the affect is rather poignant.  The song was also a single and was prominently featured in Alan Brown's gay-themed film Five Dances.

Scott's last album (so far) came out last year and is called This Here Defeat. The album's first single was Skyline:

There's also Constant:

... As well as Ruined Heart:

Finally, here's a live version, in Barcelona, of the title track:

The style of the album is not drastically different than the previous ones. However, as Scott himself says: (...) “So, it’s an obvious expectation. And one that I don’t mind. I’m very happy with this kind of place I’m at musically. I don’t feel the need to change drastically." Stay as you are Scott. It's certainly good enough for us.

The next featured artist is connected with today's story. As to how, you'll have to wait until tomorrow...