Following their first ever tour earlier this month with sold-out shows in Liverpool, Manchester and London’s Moth Club, Love Fame Tragedy last night released their debut EP I Don’t Want To Play The Victim, But I’m Really Good At It, out now via Good Soldier Songs / AWAL Recordings. The Wombats’ frontman Matthew “Murph” Murphy has brought in a raft of friends and collaborators for the solo project, from Pixies guitarist Joey Santiago and alt-J keyboardist Gus Unger-Hamilton, to Soundgarden drummer Matt Chamberlain, singer-songwriter Lauren Aquilina and model and vocalist Maddi-Jean Waterhouse.
The EP’s latest single ‘Pills’ (mixed by Grammy-winning engineer Manny Marroquin), which delves into the hollowness when the drugs – medicinal or recreational – stop working, is also out now with a new video, having debuted on Annie Mac’s Radio 1 show last night. The sense of emptiness found in Murph’s brutally self-aware lyrics is echoed in the production, which is at once both soaring and sombre, with its electro-pop synths and Murph and Lauren Aquilina’s hauntingly beautiful vocal harmonies imbibed with a kind of muffled euphoria. “It’s a really messed up Murph version of Robyn’s ‘Dancing On My Own,’” Murph explains.
‘Pills’ follows hedonistic synth-pop banger ‘My Cheating Heart’, infectious stroll through dysfunctional dating ‘Backflip’, and the hungover introspection of ‘Brand New Brain’, completing a startlingly honest EP that’s both bleak and hopeful; all held together by Murph’s irrepressible songwriting talent.
Named after a seminal Pablo Picasso exhibition at the Tate Modern, Love Fame Tragedy is the debut solo project from Matthew “Murph” Murphy, singer and guitarist for platinum-selling indie-pop heroes The Wombats. Having debuted the project live at Reading Festival last month, Murph has embarked on Love Fame Tragedy’s first ever tour, playing a homecoming show at Liverpool’s Art’s Club, before heading to Manchester, London, Berlin and the USA, with Australia beckoning next month. With plenty of new music in the pipeline and a whole new selection of exciting collaborators, expect to see much more of Love Fame Tragedy in the coming months.
