Let there be light
“I feel the world’s quite strange and terrifying… but when it comes to the people you know, I see a whole lot of beauty. I got a text from a good friend last night wishing me luck for the tour - she said ‘What you sing about, everybody knows and has felt. You want to soak up every person in that room and feel it for them, not to them’. I thought that was lovely,” he says.
While he’s been making music for about twenty years, Langley only released his debut full-length album Featherbones last year. Rave reviews quickly followed, and the track 7.13 took out the 2010 APRA Country Song of the Year award – although his music isn’t strictly country.
“I think I’d be embarrassed if I were around real country players, it’s more country-ish… I magpied a few things.”
Wellington’s Langley’s second home, and he’s lived here on and off for five or six years – including a few on the Kapiti Coast. He loves “the wild, beautiful coasts”, and when he’s not touring, Langley enjoys self-imposed hermitage in Broad Bay, on the Otago Peninsula.
“I’ve got a great wee crib where I’ve set up shop with all my books, vinyl, and my guitar – and I just read and write songs. There’s a real mellow feeling and a healing energy,” he says.
He’s just released a music video for the album’s second single Love and Money – filmed in and around a boatshed on the Pauatahanui inlet. A ‘snapshot’ of Broad Bay at a time when Langley was leaving it, his strummy guitar is complimented by a melancholy melody, singing, “I’m tired and I worry, about love and money.”
Does Langley find it hard to write “happy” songs?
“It’s hard to sing happy when you’re a miserable singer songwriter solo guy,” he laughs. “Most of the time when I’m happy, I’m not interested in exploring it – just bathing in it… coz you know it’s gonna change. But even in my most heavy moments I’m determined that there’s something beautiful in there: if there’s a dark passage there will be a light.”
Matt Langely and Darren Watson: South for the Winter Tour, Meow Café, August 14.










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