一聽音樂網

It’s November 2010 and Mat. McHugh is just home from an intense international tour to promote The Beautiful Girls (TBG) fourth album Spooks. You might expect that Mat. would cruise back into the Aussie summer and kick around the Northern Beaches of Sydney for a healthy dose sun and surf. Not the case. Leaving the band behind for some well-deserved R and R, McHugh jumps straight back on a plane headed for New York City to join fellow Aussie’s the John Butler Trio for a theatre tour across the USA and Canada. With just an acoustic guitar and some winter threads, Mat. takes to the stages with a handful of reworked TBG songs from way back in the ‘Morning Sun’ days through to the present. And he loves it. He revels in the challenge, soaks up the vibe and responds in kind to the huge appreciation of the audience. It’s an awakening and a timely reminder of where a lot of the early acoustic songs came from in the first place. Fresh back from the tour Mat heads straight for his home studio energized, inspired and in touch with his musical roots. A couple of months later and most of what will surely become Mat’s new solo album has taken shape. First things first though – June 2011 will see both a brand new 4-track EP international release entitled ‘Go Don’t Stop’ and a return to the USA and Canada for a headlining summer tour including performances at Electric Forest, Wakarusa and all of his favourite haunts across North America. Shows will be a stripped back and intimate acoustic performance of songs spanning 10 years, five albums and a whole lot o’ miles. Both a retrospective of the man behind ‘The Beautiful Girls’ and a look to the future.