EP Review: Love Fame Tragedy - 'I Don’t Want To Play The Victim, But I'm Really Good At It'
Love Fame Tragedy — Matthew Murphy’s mesmerising solo project — bursts onto the scene with debut EP “I Don’t Want To Play The Victim, But I’m Really Good At It”.
Musically, Matthew “Murph” Murphy is almost a household name, synonymous with arena-rocking indie superstars The Wombats. Lesser known, however, is his solo project Love Fame Tragedy. Having recently played his first ever shows under the moniker, starting with a surprise set at Reading Festival (also featuring Bastille’s Dan Smith for their co-written, as of yet unreleased ‘Multiply’) and proceeding through a tour of tiny, intimate clubs and venues, this EP marks the first significant collection of music for LFT, combining the earlier single ‘My Cheating Heart’ and the recently released duo of ‘Backflip’ and ‘Brand New Brain’ with the unreleased ‘Pills’, which delves into the depths of the hollowness and sense of emptiness that exists when the drugs — primarily medicinal or recreational, but also working perfectly as a metaphor for whatever it is that lets you cope with the monotony and struggles of daily life — run out.
The EP is a slick affair, stuffed full of pop sensibilities, guest stars — most notably Lauren Aquilina’s haunting vocals harmonising with Murph’s on “Pills” — and catchy, brain wrenching hooks. Between the barbed, tongue-in-cheek “Backflip”, existing to satirise the state of the dejectedly dystopian online dating, and the more rock-fuelled, opener ‘Cheating Heart’, detailing an exaggeratedly hedonistic, suave and seductive life of a Murph struggling to deal with the excesses of California — the EP fails to stay a coherent project rather than simply a collection of songs that wouldn’t fit into a Wombats album. Regardless of this, though, it manages to carve its own niche into the indie music market with some truly addictive tracks.
Backflip, for instance, is hard to not fall in love with: it’s naturally and intrinsically a good song. It’s slow, building throughout the verses to the accusatory, almost confrontational choruses that, with the understated bass line hiding underneath, makes the song an instant classic. The vocals fluctuate between heavily distorted and clean; falsetto and tenor; all layered upon each other to create harmonies that simply demand appreciation. It’s comfortably my favourite track of the EP, often catching myself humming it as I walk around. But anyone not new to LFT is sure to be familiar — the only new track is Pills.
Pills is rather sparse, as a track. Primarily it’s simply Murph’s vocals over electronic sound scapes and a drum beat, with the afore-mentioned Lauren Aquilina’s vocals harmonising almost muffled in the space behind them. Because of this, it feels intimate and emotional; the obvious production of the track (credits to Manny Marroquin for leaving it near bare) seems minimal. Obvious, yes, but it’s careful not to drown out the actual track. The sense of emptiness, then, from the lyrics — “the pills don’t work anymore, not like they used to... I still don’t take them, I don’t know what for/ I’ve never fucked up like this before” — conveyed throughout in all accounts. In this way, then, it seems to act as the most cohesive song of the four and does an admirable job in rounding out the first true offering from Murph’s vaults of solo music.
Definitely worth checking out for any Wombats fans, and has enough oomph and enough of an impact to make it worth checking out for everyone else.
Words by James O’Sullivan
Live Dates:
6th October - Yours & Owls Festival, Wollongong
8th October - Oxford Art Factory, Sydney
9th October - Howler, Melbourne
10th October - The Zoo, Brisbane