Naarm/Melbourne songwriter & musician Al Matcott releases the surprise new single ‘All The Better For’

Al Matcott’s debut album, Summer’s Coming, was a full-throated howl against global warming and the forces behind it. Featuring caterwauling guitars, driving rhythms, and incisive lyricism, it earned him a Double J feature album.

His soon-to-be-announced follow-up album, to be released on Cheersquad Records & Tapes, features a lush and expansive sonic palette. Folk and country meet garage and psychedelic rock as Matcott turns his earworm melodies and memorable one-liners to the hyperreal wasteland of our digital lives.

Matcott recently released the first single ‘Wouldn’t Expect To See You Here’, receiving widespread national support across community radio. It’s a song that tumbles forth like a lost outtake from The Stooges’ Funhouse before morphing into a sound that seamlessly blends into a sound akin to both The Replacements and The Strokes. The surprises don’t end there! It’s a song of two halves, with the fuzz-drenched riffs and shout-along choruses giving way to mournful and melancholy pedal steel and piano.

Now, between singles from the forthcoming new album, Matcott gives fans a special treat in the form of the stripped-back and intimate, standalone single ‘All The Better For’. Acoustic and heartfelt, the song features just Matcott’s voice and acoustic folk guitar, allowing space for his lyrics to ache and keen with a melancholic sense of romantic yearning, as he sings ‘I just can’t bear to be without you again, can’t barely recognise my own reflection.’

Reflecting on the song, Matcott explains its genesis and creative evolution. “‘All The Better For’ came from a guitar melody I made up and played at the wedding of some friends of mine. I thought I’d try to turn it into a love song, but to me it sounded forlorn and I’m generally blue all the time, so naturally it ended up as a sad song about missing someone.”