Lunson Burner

It’s a terribly wet and windy day in the capital. Matt Lunson must wish he was back in his native Tasmania. “Ah, it’s probably pissing down there as well,” he says, a hint of nostalgia in his voice. “We’d be coming into our winter down under so it gets a bit shit. Sort of like the way it is here pretty much all the time!”

Having spent five years on and off as a Dubliner, Lunson is well used to the city’s often erratic climate. We’re not here to talk about the weather though. The soft-spoken Australian has just released his debut solo album, Miss Vaughan. It’s a record that, in meeting the man, seems perfectly in touch with his persona. Warm and gentle, it’s free from being overly complex and is filled with simple, often stunning, songs.
It’s certainly at odds with his musical past. Enjoying minor success as front man with Australian punk band Hasselhoff, Lunson is now exploring completely new musical territory as a subtle singer-songwriter. “Well that’s sort of what I set out to achieve when I left Australia in 1998,” he says. “I went to London with the aim of removing myself completely from any scene I’d been involved with in the past and to start afresh, completely on my own terms.”
It was while on a weekend break from London that Lunson first encountered Dublin. He fell in love with the city straight away. Within a month he had moved across the Irish Sea. “I came over for a weekend and stayed for a week and a half,” he remembers. Admiring the local (musical) talent, he threw himself onto the live circuit. Initial sessions at the International bar progressed to support slots with Bell X1, and Lunson quickly began to develop a loyal fan base. It was to Tasmania though, where he would return, when it came to recording his debut LP.
“Well to be honest with you I didn’t have any plans to record at that time,” he says. “I bought a house in Tasmania and that’s kind of why I went back. I didn’t really know if I would return to Dublin or anything like that. I left as if I was leaving for good really. There was a shed behind the house I bought, so I built a small studio in it. It was a very simple kind of set up. I just began messing around and the songs sounded so good that they sort of cried out to be recorded. I thought then that I might be on to something good.”
Avoiding the noise from the nearby highway, Lunson recorded mostly at night. As a result there’s a nocturnal quality to Miss Vaughan, in much the same way as David Kitt’s Small Moments.
“Well it’s amazing how much silence falls over a place with so few people in it at night,” he says, “and Tasmania really is sparsely populated. There’s a real sense of expanse and space about the place. The sky feels bigger down there and there’s a huge amount of space between people. That definitely permeates the country, so when I listen back to the record, I can really hear Tasmania in it. No one else probably will but it’s certainly there.”
Dublin is there too. In the final stages of the recording, Bell X1’s Dave Geraghty was brought on board, adding piano while his girlfriend aided on vocals and violin. A live recording, taken from a gig in Whelan’s, is also tucked on to the record in the shape of the beautiful ‘Something ‘Bout My Baby’.
“If you listen closely on that track,” says Lunson with a smile, “you can hear the huge squeak from the door of the toilets near the stage in Whelan’s. You can also hear a few ice cubes getting dropped into the bottom of a glass. Little things like that place the song and really I had to finish the record in Ireland to give it that final stamp. You know, I left for Tasmania in much the same way I arrived in Dublin, which was to move to a new stage in my life. So in writing Miss Vaughan I was kind of painting a picture of what I’d been through before I entered the next phase of my life. As a result it made sense to release the album in the country where the songs were sort of born.”
The closing track on the record, ‘Perfect Air’, stands out from the pack. It’s the only track with beats or drums on it. Lunson sees it as a sampler for what’s to come. He’s already planning album number two.
“Well I kind of put ‘Perfect Air’ on the album as a sign post to what is going to come next. With the next album I really want people to see a sonic development as well as a songwriting development. So I tacked it on the end there just to say that the next album is going to have a fuller production and a more developed sound.”
It’s unlikely though that we’ll get another punk record from him. He laughs. “Well to be honest with you I’d like to think that this record (Miss Vaughan) is as punk a record as I’ll make. You know if punk is being true to yourself and following your own path, then coming to Dublin and making this sort of music is the most punk thing I’ve ever done.”

Miss Vaughan is out now on Go Sick. www.mattlunson.com