Love Fame Tragedy - My Cheating Heart (Single Review/Impression)

Matt Murphy, lead singer of Liverpool indie act The Wombats, has started a solo/collaborative side project and this is the result. Now let's talk about sarcasm and the flaws of this song...

Mr Matthew Murphy may be one of the most nonsensical and nondescript writers in modern indie, saying too much and nothing all at once to varying degrees of success; his overwritten style working well on The Wombats' explosive post-punk debut and on a select few tracks from their subsequent three albums but never quite to the same quality or humour that made that first album so entertaining and worthwhile. Things were not looking good from the side project, but an open mind is not a closed one (no really) and so forgetting preconceptions of quality let's dive into some different preconceptions...

So from a pick and choose band we get an inconsistent writer taking on the challenges of a jokey side project. Sound familiar? It's no secret that Matt was influenced in part by Damon Albarn and his own acclaimed Gorillaz project, but it's hard to imagine any similarities really past this point. To be completely honest, I was extremely dubious of how this song would even sound, whether it would be a polished mirror of songs from The Wombats' last album, "Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life", or if it would go for a trendy experimental quirky and undoubtedly electronic-reliant sound and surprise surprise we end up with probably a perfect balance of the two. Minus any experimentation whatsoever.

The instrumental is catchy and inoffensive but also not particularly interesting or quirky the way Gorillaz always..... The way Gorillaz always used to be. It is pretty exclusively electronic and succeeds in isolating Matt himself, sounding very much out of place on this song, albeit delivering a stronger and more emphatic delivery than on that last Wombats record. There's really not much else to say about the tone, and I'm not wasting any more time on it.

So I said I'd talk about sarcasm and the lyrics which are undoubtedly, unfortunately, the focal point to the song. Clichés and nondescript filler make up the entirely of these lyrics and the mocking undertone is so poorly executed he comes off as some insincere talent show contest singing a cover of some random, assigned, bland pop trash. He may be trying to make a statement but he's either far too pretentious or too shallow to notice the lyrics are utter garbage radio fodder nonsense. He doesn't sell it so it doesn't sound whatsoever convincing and he comes across as irritating and naive in spite of the expert maturity and commentary displayed on excellent Wombats songs in the past. The reason all this is a problem is the framing, which is the equivalent to an unmounted child's painting in which no context is given within the song and the musical quality doesn't back the lyrical quality up in any regards which leaves the audience confused at what exactly they've just listened to and, in my case at least, why I listened to it in the first place.

Matt Murphy clearly has ambition, but he doesn't yet have the scope or the skill to write in this style, as he fails at conveying any emotion or purpose to the song in any element. I even have issue with the mixing, which doesn't flatter any single element of the instrumental and only emphasises how awkward his voice fits in this tune. Maybe this has an audience, but I could not care less about this waste of space, and I don't care to hear this again.

Overall, I guess this gets a decent 3 out of 10, I don't even recommend this to Wombats fans.

ARGHH IT'S JUST SO POORLY FRAMED!

"My Cheating Heart"

Love Fame Tragedy

11/06/2019

Hmmm... Maybe I should talk about some music I like again, how does that sound? Perhaps a midyear evaluation? Let me know what you wanna see...