STACK Magazine April 2015 Issue 126

087

MUSIC

a very bizarre town," he says. "A town

where A-list actors can become down-

and-out actors who have ‘lost their way'

a bit, living in a wing of their homes.

There is still a lot of love in the air. It’s

going to eat and swallow you up... yeah,

there’s a lot of broken dreams there.“

Listening to

Glitterbug

, it could be

the audio equivalent of an Instagram

account – just darker, funnier, and

with audio accompaniment. Songs

Your Body’s aWeapon

and

This is

Not a Party

give us all an inside view

of the snapshots behind the songs; a

mad night out here, a surreal scene in a

strange place there. And not all of them

are based on Murphy’s LA experiences

either –

Your Body’s aWeapon

being one

case in point. “I went to a Brit Awards

afterparty and Harry Styles was there,

and I was walking out – in the days when

I was still smoking. I was walking out

behind him to go have a cigarette, and

some kind of suicidal-looking paparazzi

took a picture of him, and that’s where

the idea spawned. Like a first person

narrative of a creepy paparazzi guy,

following someone around.”

The album’s other ‘big’ song after

GreekTragedy

Emoticons

. But Murph

is using social media as a metaphor,

rather than explicitly singing about

the tiny symbols that substitute words

for emotions on all manner of social

media. “That song is about – to quote

the legendary R. Kelly – ‘My mind’s

telling me no, but my body’s telling me

yes.' The emoji or emoticon references

are just a quick way of spraying cold

water on a potentially hot situation. I

just thought

Emoticons

was a cool title

for a song, way before even writing that

song. So, I don’t know if I’m making this

definitive statement about social media

in 2015 or whatever. It should have been

called

Emojis

, because emoticons are

different to emojis – which someone

wonderfully pointed out to me.”

At the end of the day, pop music and

life intersect in weird ways. For Murph,

the whole experience of making and

touring

Glitterbug

is partially about

everything coming full circle.

"The creepiest thing was, I’m twisting

my life up to get these songs out. I’d

stay in LA and – there was a point

where everything kind of went full

circle and became real, and now I’m

in a relationship, we’re touring in LA,

and in the UK,” he reflects. ”I was never

expecting that, because everything was

so solid back home for me, hence why I

found the need to create something that

was slightly more tumultuous or just a

bit weirder than the reality of my life.“

Glitterbug

by The Wombats

s out on April 17 through

arner Music.

Emoticons

Listen to this on headphones.

Then play it on a road trip. Then

listen on headphones again.

If you don’t get The Wombats after

that, you never will. The guitars twist

their way around your mind, the

lyrics poke us in all the right places.

A bulletproof offer you can’t accept?

Not this song, baby.

Your Body is

a Weapon

An uptown tale of flashy people

flashing around, the song’s

underlying pulse and pithy

lyrics, later hoodwinked by synth

and guitar, make it a highlight.

It’s 1980-something and your

DeLorean is driving an endless

freeway to nowhere. This is

probably playing.

This is Not

a Party

If a synth can kill you, it’s here.

It’s that night. You know that night:

your friend really shouldn’t do that –

he does. That shouldn’t happen…

oh dear, it did. Not a party, a

hurricane. You’ve been there, and if

you haven’t, you'll be there shortly.

Liverpool is one of the UK’s port cities. In the 1950s and 1960s,

American sailors would alight from their ships carrying US

rock’n’roll records, and inevitably these found their way to the

hungry ears of the young Beatles and the like. But there’s loads

more to Liverpool than the musical legacy of The Fabs – the

brilliant Echo and the Bunnymen for a start – and Murph is very

keyed in to the history and character of his hometown.

“In the UK there has always been a north/south divide," he

says. "The south contains the wealth, and the north contains the

struggle and the resistance – and therefore the good bands. But,

I don’t really see the divide anymore. And Liverpool – compared

to when I was growing up – has changed so much. It won the

European Capital of Culture [in 2008], and just had millions of

pounds thrown at it. It’s just a great party city, the food is really

good now and there’s parts which feel like East Village New York,

or East London.”