MATT ROBERTS

NOW YOU ARE GONE Cat# SV0483

Dr Matt Roberts is fast developing a reputation for delivering pop that satisfies, by layering incisive lyrics and elegant tunes over primal, more-ish grooves. He has been playing his unique piano-pop with his band in the nation's finest indie venues for the past 6 years. Matt's new album Now You Are Gone is his second studio set for Sound Vault Records (Ross Wilson, Deborah Conway); on it he ventures into electro-acoustica in the production style of Alex Lloyd, Machine Translations and Badly Drawn Boy.

In early 2004 Matt took time away from medicine to play keyboards for ARIA winner Hamish (Cordrazine) in his live band, returning to a mix of medicine and music later in the year. Negotiations with publicists, venues and labels now take place via mobile phone in clinic corridors. The new album was recorded on weekends and evenings, working with co-producer Paul Martin (Augie March, Spiderbait) and ARIA winning engineer Nigel Derricks.

The obvious question is - does he use his patients in his songs? "Never literally, of course. Very indirectly, yes. I find work inspiring; some songs are coloured by that." Matt is quick to add, grinning "but mostly it's songs about chicks!"
Now You Are Gone is in stores now. Melbourne's Manchester Lane will host the album launch from 4pm on Sunday October 9, with special guest Dan Hall (Taxiride).

THE RUBY RECORD Cat# SV0322

Can the word "Melbourne" be an adjective? A wander among the treasures that comprise The Ruby Record, the debut studio album from Melbourne singer-songwriter Matt Roberts leaves little doubt in the affirmative. Whilst ranging from weightless, poetic guitar pop to knockout piano soul and flaunting influences that span several generations (The White Album, Joni Mitchell, early Billy Joel, later Neil Finn, Tim Rogers), the common thread that pulls these 12 red gems together is, well, their Melbourne-ness. Recorded with up-and-coming label Sound Vault Records in the former industrial heart of West Melbourne, this is stripped-back acoustic bliss so real and immediate that you can almost hear the V-line locomotives thundering past in the adjacent railyards. Roberts' guitar work (and I mean work!) is certainly evocative of several tons of diesel engine - powerful, raw, yet internally intricate - was this really recorded using the pickup alone?

Long-time co-conspirator David Kipp adds fuel to the fire with searing backing vocals and basslines so smooth, steely and reliable you could run express trains along them. The album opens with booming bass drum under the right foot of Kipp's Bathysphere bandmate, Matt Mulcahy, guiding us with the precision of a signalman and the bounding passion of a trainspotter through 45 minutes of clattering rhythms that describe daily beauty, ritual joys.

And the centrepiece of this rail analogy? The passengers, the freight, the reason for all the noise? The lyrics of Matt Roberts, for this is where this ruby really shines. Roberts stands and delivers (in a voice recalling Bowie, Finn, Freedman) line after line of accessible, unpretentious suburban storytelling. By the third listening we really wanted to meet Charlie, the ageing remorseful patriarch of the opening track (Hey Betty), and May, the blacksmith's sister (Me and May As Well) who lives above the fire station as she finds the sirens a turn-on. Then there's that postgirl who appears in the sensual painting on the back cover (and the sherbet fountain that is Madame Ruby and the Postgirl)- what did she ever see in the garbageman? Hilton Street had us reaching for the Melways, such is Roberts' description of idyllic urban-village living, whilst the final track, Tullamarine, with its lustrous tenor saxophone and winter-dusk piano made you want to jump on the desk, thump your chest and shout "I'm from there! I know this place!!"

Right now, Matt Roberts is a bloke in a beanie on the Broadie line, another face in the rush-hour crowd you never make eye contact with. Like all city-dwellers, he probably loves the anonymity. That may just change; those boyish features, contorted with a singer's furious glee, adorn the maroon-and-white cover of The Ruby Record, due for nationwide release this September. Will he be famous? Will you, and thousands of others, run out and buy this red disc when it gets the airplay it so clearly deserves, filling your homes, cars and headphones with a sound so Melbourne you offer your landlord a million bucks to stay right where you are? Does it matter? That face on the cover says not really. It says Matt Roberts is having the time of his life. We'll have what he's having.

Visit: www.mattroberts.com.au