Matt Corby explores the power of empathy and sobering up to escape the prisons of the mind

Aptly titled Rainbow Valley; the idyllic verdure became the focal point of his eponymous second album and allowed Corby to ruminate on impending first-time fatherhood, philosophically understanding your imprint on the world, and assimilating with your hardships in order to grow.

When I speak to Corby, via Zoom, he is surrounded by a stack of doors and various tools, whilst sat on the floor of an empty space that is soon-to-be the control room of his new studio at Rainbow Valley. With a dart in his hand and his canine pal Django pottering about in the background, there's a contemplative timbre in his voice as he tells me that the last couple of weeks have been both productive and stressful – between making sense of the global pandemic and trying to build his new studio – and somewhat non-stop with a two-year-old running around at the same time.

As someone who generally lives in a perpetual state of isolation, I was curious to know what life was like for Corby in the height of the pandemic. He notes that whilst there was some kind of hope that Australia were on the homestretch of normality, things have become progressively bleaker.

“I was kind of just in self-preservation mode like everyone else, just making sure everything’s covered and not knowing how long it’s gonna last,” he tells me before slipping into laughter at his plans for turning Rainbow Valley into somewhat of an apocalyptic bunker: “We found a caravan for sale down the road and [bought it] because I thought more of my mates were going to come up, and we’d have some sort of Armageddon farm cranking, but that didn’t really end up happening – the caravan’s just been sitting there.”

When faced with an infinite stretch of time ahead of you, there’s an internal pressure that bubbles up as a sign that you should hunker down and truly apply yourself to personal endeavours; to revel in the introspection and use the solitude in order to propel yourself to create your magnum opus.

For Corby, this has been a period of stagnation where he hasn’t felt like writing, and has had some philosophical contemplations on the idea of “not feeling like a writer” – partly because his old studio space is out of commission and he no longer has a base for making music apart from a small MIDI keyboard and microphone set up. Instead, he’s been finding stimulation in producing, making hip-hop beats, and writing for other artists such as Sia, Tash Sultana and Great Gable.

As we discuss the internal pressures that we put upon ourselves day to day, Corby likens the pressure of revelling in positivity during this time to Jonathan Wilson’s “Can We Really Party Today” – a song that is upbeat and filled revelry in the verses, whilst the chorus is awash with an air of melancholy that questions whether you should be allowed to enjoy yourself if everything around you is in a state of turmoil. It’s a testament to the timelessness of music as, despite being released nine years ago, it is a perfectly parallelled with the kind of existential guilt that has permeated many minds over the past few months.

In a coincidentally premonitory way, “Better” – the neo-psychedelic dreamscape from Rainbow Valley – sees Corby trying to overcome apathy in order to understand the simple dichotomy of existence that strips away all socio-political constructs that are assigned to the human condition. As such, his latest releases “If I Never Say A Word” and “Vitamin” are a mirroring of that idea with empathy and escaping our addictions in mind.

“It’s my biggest fear when I have to talk to anyone about what I do, or to talk about the reason why I did something. It’s like, [I almost want to say] I don’t know; that’s how I felt that day,” Corby tells me with a smile when I ask him how he feels about people diving into the meaning of a song.

As someone who writes mostly from personal experiences, there often comes a time where you're putting parts of yourself into a song in order to let go of a past experience. By putting those streams of consciousness into the music, you’re letting them transcend the spaces that they have inhabited in your mind and allowing someone else the opportunity to prescribe their own meaning to it.

Corby’s introverted disposition comes with its benefits in terms of being able to disconnect from the outside world and knowing when is the right time to speak out. “If I Never Say A Word” advocates a power in the unspoken and acting with empathy to those around you. We often forget to think before we speak, and rarely stop to contemplate the impact of carving out a false idea of perfectionism via social media platforms.

“I’ll get it right in my own time / And I guess you’ll forgive me,” he sings, and you can almost reference it to the notion that we believe there’s an impermanence to the things that we say or do; that everything can be undone as fast as the click of a button.

“I can admire people for being champions of the truth and all of that stuff on those platforms,” he begins, “but it’s a tough and tiring thing to do – even just to present yourself – if you have the self-interest to do that online. I think if people were to take it all away, there would be a lot more free-thinking going on, and [people would] probably pay more attention to what’s going on in front of them,” Corby says on the idea that addictions manifest themselves in many different ways. It’s why he chooses to communicate through music wherever possible as it’s his one means to truly captivate someone one-on-one as opposed to in a group, where he’s self-confessedly not a good communicator.

“Vitamin” is rooted in a conversation that Corby had in January with his collaborators Matthew Neighbour and Alex Henriksson about a documentary that he watched a year previously that detailed how pandemics spread and how SARS had started in a similar province in China from a wet market. He says that it was something that was playing on his mind, recently, in terms of a huge adjustment period that needed to happen around the world, which in turn began the thought process about the addictions and routines that we fall into and how we don’t often have any greater ideas beyond that.

“'Vitamin' is like where are your ideas coming from? What are your vitamins, you know? If I just come from these quick fixes, like if have a coffee, and I can keep moving for two hours, and I can do some emails, you know what I mean? It's like you get trapped in this [routine] and something like COVID-19 really highlights the fact that people are stuck in this small prison of small ideas for the most part of their life, which is just a normality so to speak. It's a very fragile thing as we've seen.”

The main essence of “Vitamin” is about sobering up from the thought prisons that we find ourselves in, in order to be more present with the ones that we love. “I need to hear it more than anyone. I get stuck in my own stresses and can’t see the good in things some days,” Corby tells me.

With a “UK-inspired” beat that feels rooted in underground rave culture as opposed to the slinky neo-soul and psych-inflected indie hues that we’ve come to expect from Corby, the song’s sonic footprint couldn’t be more juxtaposed from its real message as something that is permeated with dark undertones on how we try to fill ourselves up and find comfort in substances that destroy us from the inside out: “I hope that I will find in me / The ability to go on / When the reasons are clear / I’ll start moving on / I’ve got to get sober / ‘Cause I really love you all".

As his career crawls past the decade mark, Corby finds himself caring less about being a purist in trying to master everything that he puts onto a record, (“As long as it sounds like the music is exciting – that’s the main goal now”) and instead, is leaning into the ceaseless exploration process of it all. Rather than trying to reach a pinnacle in his proficiency as a multi-instrumentalist, Corby jokes: “In ten years I’m going to be really good, and then in another ten years I’ll be really, really, good, and that will happen until I finally put it down.”

Whilst Corby may only be two albums deep into his career, there’s a protectiveness surrounding his creative process that is slowly being shed. Corby has always recognised that he doesn’t release a lot of music, but is beginning to feel obligated to give a song “to the world or the 1-1000 people who may listen to it,” so as not to deprive the listener of something new – even if he knows it’s not the best thing he could’ve done with that piece of music. His perspective has shifted towards releasing music with the purpose of a song being the signifier of where he is at during a specific period in his life. So, does that mean “If I Never Say A Word” and “Vitamin” signify the start of an album campaign? Not exactly…

“My ethos on making music is changing a lot. I think for the last ten years I’ve always tried to cater for someone else’s opinion maybe a little too much,” he tells me. “If this time in isolation has taught me anything, it’s just that I’ve got to not care so much about that anymore and just do what I want. Maybe that’s not the pinnacle, but that’s the moment where I’m like: ‘I’m gonna do what I want now’ and if that means like releasing a huge ballad, then I'll do it, but if it also means making a fucking record that sounds like The Information by Beck then I'll do it!”

Once the new studio is up and running in Rainbow Valley, and Corby is able to unleash the musical expertise that earned him the nickname Captain Fiddle Fingers, it looks like we’re going to be entered into a new chapter in his vast soundscape. Whilst this period of introspection has been somewhat stagnant in terms of actual creation, the art of empathy and searching for what is truly fulfilling is something that we can all take on board to find solace in, and perhaps the very thing that stokes the fire in Corby’s soul.