Murph: The Wombats here to stay despite early Love Fame Tragedy success

Matthew ‘Murph’ Murphy says The Wombats are here to stay.
The ‘Let’s Dance To Joy Division’ hitmaker’s frontman may be excited to push forward with his new Love Fame Tragedy project, but he has hinted at a great and prolific future for the band with bassist Tord Overland Knudsen and Dan Haggis.
Speaking exclusively to BANG Showbiz, he said: "I said to them that [The Wombats] have such a great opportunity here to be a band that gets to six, seven, eight albums.
"That’s an opportunity that doesn’t really come along for a lot of people, so I definitely have to make sure we do justice to all the opportunities that we’ve been given.
"That’s one of the main reasons why the Wombats aren’t gonna go anywhere. But I still wanna try and get something else up and running as well."
Murph is preparing to go on tour with Love Fame Tragedy for the first time this week with intimate shows in Manchester, London and his hometown of Liverpool – and he admitted such small shows are always intimidating.
He explained: "That’s gonna be cool, and also nerve wracking. Even with the Wombats, playing smaller shows freaks me out because you get to see individuals faces and you can see them reacting to one song better than another.
"And then you go round in circles in your own head. Whereas if you’re playing Reading Festival and there’s a s**t load of people dancing round having a good time, that’s a lot easier as far as I’m concerned."
The musician – who has collaborated with the likes of Pixies’ Joey Santiago, Gus Unger-Hamilton from alt-J and Soundgarden’s Matt Chamberlain on the new material – has been working hard on Love Fame Tragedy including debut EP ‘I Don’t Want To Play The Victim, But I’m Really Good At It’, which will be released later this month.
Looking to the future, Murph will continue to write for the project’s first album – which is already recorded but could transform as more tracks get written – and he still has more people to try and get on board.
He teased: "I need to get preparing for that. I’ve got a few people in mind, but I don’t know if I might be stretching myself a bit. But they can only tell me to f**k off, and that’s fine!"