Mat McHugh

My whole mission is to strip away all the show business bullshit.

"The music industry is so full of people acting cooler than they are and pretending to be people they’re not … I don’t want to dress up as someone I’m not.” 

It’s as simple as that.The Beautiful Girls will always be a part of McHugh's identity but now, over a decade later, he's ready to release his music under his own name. 

“You don’t have that much time as a human being to say what you want to say – I wanted to give a clear indication of who I am and where I’m coming from.”

Like his attitude Mat  McHugh’s music is refreshing. His latest EP Go Don’t Stop offers soft yet commanding vocals, framed beautifully by pared back acoustics.

An approach best captured in the final track of the record, My Mind is an Echo Chamber. Layer by layer of the song was stripped back, so much so that its former self is almost unrecognisable – a dub roots version found on The Beautiful Girl’s most recent record Spooks. I wondered whether McHugh knew that the acoustic version was always there, waiting to surface…

“Weirdly enough I was booked in to do Like a Version on Triple J and they do one cover song and you have to do an acoustic song – pretty much solo. I honestly didn’t know what I was going to do and I was five minutes away from going on air.

“I had to try and pick a song from Spooks and I knew the chords for that song and came up with a little finger picking pattern and played it there an then – the time I recorded it for Like a Version was the first time I played it the whole way through.”

If that’s not talent I’m not quite sure what is. The same feel of My Mind is an Echo Chamber is evident throughout the entire EP however this time as the result of a conscious choice,

“The Beautiful Girls have gotten increasingly more complicated musically and for me it was always on purpose, I wanted to challenge myself with things…that’s not where I’m coming from anymore, I just want to express myself in the clearest and best way possible.”

Filmed in documentary style McHugh’s latest film clip Go Don’t Stop continues down the same path. There are no fancy concepts going on here, just the banalities of his daily life. Transformed by his music into things of appreciation, things we shouldn't take for granted.

“I’ve been travelling around the world pretty much my entire adult life – a lot of travel and I’ve pretty much seen everywhere. If you do that for long enough it helps define who you are and how you look at things – you see the world from a lot of different perspectives.”’

After all this time on the road McHugh is looking forward to playing a string of Australian shows but just as/ more importantly spending some time with his family (he’s the proud father of a baby boy!). Things seem to be moving along.

“I’m having to bring it back down and start it all up again but I feel like I’m infinitely better as a musician when the band started.”

Drop in to JB Hi Fi for a copy of Go Don't Stop, or any other reliable music store. Also feel free to check it out on Itunes.