After years of precision and pressure, Matt Corby is learning to trust his instincts – as a father, as a person, and as an artist.
His new record is the culmination of the lessons he’s learned along the way.
Out today via Island Records/Universal Music, Tragic Magic sees the Australian singer-songwriter further refine his timeless sound, balancing joy and hardship through rich basslines, delicate restraint, and soaring falsetto, wrapped in his ever-evolving brand of sophisticated soul.
He joins me on Zoom in the lead-up to release day, and tells me he’s feeling a familiar mix of nerves and anticipation. “I always feel a bit anxious before a release,” he says from his studio, Rainbow Valley, tucked away in the Northern NSW hinterland. “You’ve got no idea how people are going to receive it, so you just hit and hope.”
It’s an interesting perspective from an artist now four albums and over 15 years deep into his career. While he first appeared at the age of 16 as an Australian Idol contestant in 2007, where he was runner-up, it wasn’t until his 2011 EP Into the Flame that he moved into the global spotlight, propelled by the ARIA Award-winning masterpiece that is “Brother”.
He spent years refining his sound and, at times, pushing himself too far to prove what he’s capable of. But on Tragic Magic, Corby takes a step back, returning to what he does best – following where the music intuitively wants to go.
Love Music?
Get your daily dose of everything happening in Australian/New Zealand music and globally.
Tragic Magic pulls from two creative paths Corby found himself going down over the past 18 months – songs sporadically written that were never intended to be part of a record, and arrangements created for what was originally going to be an instrumental record. He recalls putting the various works-in-progress into a folder while in the studio with Chris Collins and Nat Dunn, who he collaborated with on much of Tragic Magic, and began to see an album take shape.
View this post on Instagram
“There was a lot of stuff that was already recorded, so we flew into a session and finished them off. Some things we started again from scratch, but we really had no intention of it having a constant theme, or having the genres feel like they’re all working together or anything like that,” he explains.
“I never have a plan,” he continues. “I’m always just following if something’s creating a feeling, I’m like, ‘Okay, how do we preserve that as best as we can’. On the last record, we were trying really hard to be quite traditional in our approach with how a song should start and finish. We did the opposite with this one. We’re like, ‘If it feels good, then that’s it’,” he says, before sarcastically adding: ‘Oh, it has no chorus, oh bummer!’. Like, it wasn’t a problem.”
Over time, Corby says his mindset shifted from trying to prove himself through his music to simply letting things be what they are. He recently revisited some of his older songs – something he usually avoids “because I’ll get mad and be like, ‘That’s shit’” – and recognised that pressure in the recordings.
“Some of it, I was like, ‘Wow, that’s actually cool,’” he says. “And other times I thought, ‘Alright mate, you could have just left it there and it would’ve been really good, but you’ve kind of fucked it here’.”
I ask how, if at all, listening to his own catalogue helped him in the making of Tragic Magic. He tells me he’s changed in the sense of leaning to “get out of my own way”, adding that the music he creates now “just has to bring something out of you when you hear it… it doesn’t have to be the most complex thing.”
From there, I wonder whether there were any other artists or records he found himself drawn to during this period. But he tells me he tries not to listen to other stuff when he’s in writing mode, because he doesn’t want to be affected by it.
“It starts to seep in,” he explains. “Like, I didn’t listen to Tame Impala for three years because I’m like, ‘If I listen to that, I’ll want to be that guy’ because it’s so good. My whole goal in life would be to be Kevin Parker, you know. So I try to keep the input to a minimum.”
Instead, he says, he indulged in a lot of instrumental music without vocals – because that’s where, musically speaking, he feels most accomplished and doesn’t necessarily feel he’d be swayed by the input in the same way. “I’ll listen to a lot of jazz, stuff that gives me little melodies and feels that I can try and tap into when I’m creating my own instrumentals.”
The loosened grip on structure allows Tragic Magic’s 13 tracks to unfold freely, exploring themes of fatherhood and joy, but also grief and heartache. The smooth, strings-rich “War to Love” is a perfect example. Opening with the line “You’re fucking me up!”, the song reminds us that love is a choice – and sometimes it’s not an easy one. “I tried my best to make that sentiment relatable in this song,” he says.
Similarly, “Long and Short” beautifully navigates great personal loss, written after his partner’s mother passed from pancreatic cancer. “It was a really devastating time for everyone, it still hasn’t been great, you know. Grief is crazy, and it comes in waves,” he pauses, sighing deeply.
“There’s moments where you’re coping and there’s moments where you’re really overwhelmed by it. But I’d made this bed of music, and was with a friend and we started writing a poem about wishing someone well on their departure, and that set the theme for the song.”
It’s a sentiment that resonates beyond his own story, echoing the kind of loss many, present company included, experience too soon – the quiet, disorienting grief that lingers long after someone you love is gone. “It’s funny how you get triggered by things too,” he continues, after I tell him of my own similar loss. “It’s nice to try and create something that feels close to the sentiment that you want, and I feel that we accomplished that with ‘Long and Short’.
“Sometimes, you have all the intentions of what a song should be about and in the end it doesn’t make sense or you don’t get the point across, so I’m glad it [‘Long and Short’] meant something, you know, that’s the goal.”
Corby will soon take the album on tour with a show in Auckland on May 29th, before a run of Australian dates kicking off on June 3rd.
“I think a lot of these songs will feel really good live,” he says. “The hard thing about when you get into your fourth, fifth record or whatever… you don’t get to road test stuff like your first record or your first EP. You’re playing those fucking songs for years in front of people so there you’ve crafted them from a live perspective.
“Whereas I make everything almost on the day that it’s written with no clue how to actually fucking perform the thing,” he laughs. “I definitely think there’s going to be some difficult mountains to climb with a couple of the songs… but I think there’s some ones that will be better live. No doubt. So I’m really looking forward to performing most of the album.”
Matt Corby’s Tragic Magic is out now. For complete tour and ticket information, see here.
MATT CORBY AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND TOUR 2026
Friday, May 29th
Auckland Town Hall, Auckland NZ
Wednesday, June 3rd
Thebarton Theatre, Adelaide, SA
Thursday, June 4th
Riverside Theatre, Perth, WA
Saturday, June 6th*
Winter Wine Festival, Gerringong, NSW
*not a Frontier show
Tuesday, June 9th
Forum Theatre, Melbourne, VIC
Friday, June 12th
Civic Theatre, Newcastle, NSW
Saturday, June 13th*
Vivid LIVE, Tumbalong Park, Sydney, NSW
*not a Frontier show
Sunday, June 14th
Fortitude Music Hall, Brisbane, QLD
