Matt Abbott
Matt Abbott releases his brand new single, I Love This City on 31st May, through Mercury Records.
I Love This City is a drive time friendly blitz of hefty baselines and shimmering guitars that draws reference to both New Order and The Temper Trap. Lyrically though, Abbott is coming from a darker place. "I stopped writing love songs," he says.
"I wanted to write about what was happening in my life. When I came back to Wakefield after a year of being away, so many pubs and shops had shut down and loads of buildings knocked down. But I still loved the place, which is where the lyrics come from”.
Singer songwriter, Matt Abbott has already negotiated a tricky road to pop success over the past 18 months. As one half of the duo, Skint And Demoralised he scored a deal with Mercury and recorded Love, And Other Catastrophes in 2009, a debut album that swung with groovesome brass and heavyweight pop hooks. Much of the summer was spent playing heart bruised love songs in front of charmed festival audiences.
Nearly a year later, Abbott was back at square one having scrapped the blueprint for Love, And Other Catastrophes. His debut single The Thrill Of Thirty Seconds had gathered critical acclaim without denting the charts. Disillusioned, broke and without an album to promote, Abbott returned home to Wakefield and began working in the local HMV.
He rediscovered his roots. What followed was a minor epiphany. "I went back to doing what I loved most," he says. "I went back to writing songs about what I knew - like living in Wakefield, growing up - rather than teenage love songs. When I was writing stuff before I was wearing cravats and listening to Scott Walker. It wasn't me. It just didn't feel right."
The duo set about remodelling their sound in 2009, writing new material along the way. What followed was a creative flush that resulted in songs that were harder, more dancier than before. They dropped the name, Skint And Demoralised. Matt Abbott was now standing by his tunes in name, too.
"It’s bigger and ballsier," says Abbott. "It's the music you could imagine blasting out of a club or a festival PA. We both loved Underworld's single Born Slippy and we started to write tracks like that."