Soak It Up: Matt Walters
» Matt Walters - Trancending Time and Space - January 10, 2007
» Matt Walters - Reaches for the moon, stars and people - April 14, 2006
» Matt Walters - East Brunswick Club Hotel, Vic - December 20, 2006
“If you’re in an “I wanna drown my sorrows like a pathetic alcoholic” kinda mood, that’s when you wanna sit alone...have you ever been to Gerald’s?”
As singer/songwriter Matt Walters sits across from me in Melbourne’s cosy Night Cat, sipping tea and talking about Charlie Kaufman, my mind recoils back to a few nights previous, where I had been privy to one of Walters’ intimate residency shows at the Wesley Anne. I am also pleasantly surprised to find Walters quite a likeable, affable character, as you may well find out...
“I was at uni for two and a half years and I dropped out with six months to go, I quit my job, so I was unemployed and just recording in my bedroom. If you’re gonna do something, dedicate everything you have to making it amazing” Matt states, glint in his ol’ eye. Having just finished a residency at the Wesley Anne in Melbourne and currently working on release number two, the first being the full-length, The Moon, Stars and People- though Matt prefers to shy away from speaking about his debut record, putting it down to the evolution of his artistry rather than any kind of shame; “I’ve gone quite pop, not in a bad way...when I first started writing songs, I was very conscious of my surroundings, I was only 18 and I was almost a little obsessed with fitting in with the singer/songwriter cliques around here. Once I woke up to that, things got a lot easier. That was a part of getting older, becoming more natural in what you do.”
So, how has the work on the next aural offering coming along? “I went to the studio three months ago to record an album new record about twelve or so songs with full band arrangement but were only gonna put out 5. It’ll be out July this year, and it’s been awesome”
Matt is the kind of prize singer/songwriter one likes to find; complete with morality (“Ambition to make great music is one thing, ambition for fame is another”) and adorable self-deprecation (“I write every day, I’ve always got songs happening...just depends if they’re any good or not (laughs)”) but, most of all, brilliant music. Part of this coming from his imagination with instrumentation: “I have two lovely guitars, I love instruments, that’s a big part of the home demo thing: it was just me recording in my bedroom, saltshakers, tambourine, pots and pans... (laughs)”
A brief yak ensues, though most it being the surrealism of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and suiciding to Sartre, all this from a simple question of Matt’s schooling: “I was a film student didn’t finish my degree but I was a film student. I absolutely fell in love with Michel Gondry’s filmmaking...Charlie Kaufman is a massive influence too, as a writer. I’m a big movie geek; I’m always at the Nova, every week...”
After a brief run-through of the residency shows, Matt asserts that warm, intimate shows are his ideal: “They’re the kind of people I really wanna play to, the kind of people that really listen and soak it up”
