Matt Wellham
After years of photographing and filming the London music scene, Matt’s now based in Sydney, Australia. A lover of the post-punk and alternative movement, he can usually be found in the grassroots venues, camera in one hand and a beer in the other.
Since his debut EP ‘tragicomedy’ back in 2023, Brodie Milner has quietly been working on a new collection of songs, focusing on a series of characters and narratives that intertwine in a sarcastic, serious, cynical, sad and sincere way.
Ahead of the release of ‘Convenience Store Gospel‘ taken from his forthcoming EP ‘Holy Ghost Survivors Group (Part 1)‘, I caught up with Brodie in an East London coffee house to discuss his upbringing and past influences, the tragic reality of the ever-online world, and the intriguing inspiration behind his next collection of characters.
Matt: So Brodie, where are you from?
Brodie: I’m from a seaside town on the east coast of England which, economically, is sort of stuck in the eighties. It’s an old spa town where tourism was the economy and when cheap flights to Spain became a thing, people stopped coming. It’s a very classic British seaside town, very kitschy, the sound of slot machines everywhere and no money changing hands.
Matt: Sounds like a suitably bleak British town. How did you first start writing and performing music there? What were your early inspirations?
Brodie: My mum is sort of responsible for my music taste. She used to play a lot of 60s folk revival stuff and old gospel, all of which I hated at the time. Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie were constantly playing in the background and I hated it until later in life, which is quite interesting. Maybe I should’ve just got on board earlier, considering I’m ripping them off so much now.
The first time I wanted to play guitar was when I heard The White Stripes’ ‘Elephant’. I dabbled in writing music as a kid, but it was really bad. I’ve recently been listening to a lot of Hayley Williams and when her first record came out, I think she was sixteen. I was not one of those people who could write good music at that age.
I started playing live in local folk clubs. The first club I played was completely unplugged, with no equipment at all. It was fully acoustic and they had a very strict policy on speaking during songs. You’d get some of the sharpest daggers you’ve ever received if you dared speak while someone was playing. So for a long time, I’d play and no one would speak. Then when I started doing actual gigs and people had interests outside of whatever I was talking about, that was really jarring.
Matt: Going back to ‘Elephant’ being one of your first records, do you feel that album influenced your sound? To me, part of your sound is those infectious bass lines that really carry the song forward.
Brodie: I think what happened is that when I started playing folk clubs, I got really into Ben Howard and John Martyn. John Martyn was the big one. Just the most beautiful guitar playing and still, after all these years, if I put it on, it’s like, wow, that’s grand.
When I was doing a lot of solo stuff, I sort of stole that style of playing, the percussive, really intricate kind of thing, but it doesn’t translate as well to three or four people on stage. I started thinking more about instrumentation beyond just me and a guitar, and bass felt like an accessible way to do that. Bass feels like such a singular way to get into a groove, something I can’t quite sometimes get on guitar. Now, when I enter the studio, the first thing I usually lay down is the bass.
Matt: You’re becoming known for your sharp and intellectual lyricism. Have you always channelled that into music, or have you considered other creative outputs?
Brodie: I wish I were disciplined enough to write a novel. If I could pick one talent, it would be writing books.
I’ve had a go at poetry. Sometimes it’s fine. Most of the time it’s poor.
I’ve played music from such a young age that there’s a part of me that can’t leave it behind, but yeah, I’d love to write a book. Or some really, really good tweets. I started doing this thing where my Instagram captions became short stories, and funnily enough, a couple of songs have come off the back of those.
Matt: Before touching on your new work, I want to ask about your debut EP ‘tragicomedy’. It blends tragedy and comedy, and revisiting it now, the lyrics feel more relevant than ever given the current social and political climate. Have you noticed that yourself? Are people connecting with it differently three years on?
Brodie: The politics are obviously still relevant, and I think they will be for a long time, which is just woeful. But what was relevant about ‘comedy’, particularly the second half of that song, is that I’m really talking about political commentary itself, especially from a right-wing male podcaster perspective, where the whole point is to make empty political statements just to be provocative. Unfortunately, that’s become more relevant than ever.
My favourite line in that song is, “Argue like Socrates and add a dash of vitriol, whilst knowing you won’t have to drink the poison.” Socrates would amble around ancient Greece arguing with people for the sake of argument and eventually he was made to drink poison because he was such a nuisance. These modern-day male podcasters are arguing for argument’s sake, while being in positions where there are no consequences. They don’t have to drink the poison.
Matt: Looking at your recent work, there are three singles out, ‘Drinking Martinis in the Olive Gardens of Gethsemane’, ‘God i’ and ‘Convenience Store Gospel‘. Each explores individual characters and their interactions with the world around them. How do you approach writing songs with such complex narratives?
Brodie: I started writing like this when I worked on ‘hedonist’ and the rest of ‘tragicomedy’. The whole idea was this tragedy/comedy thing. Online, there’s a constant onslaught of things that are deeply tragic and things that are hilarious, and you get them within seconds of each other. They’re all given the same importance, the same amount of time and that’s a nightmare. I’m constantly living in this tension of feeling 100,000 different things at once.
I try to replicate that lyrically by putting things next to each other, something funny alongside a line that’s really dark, just to jar the listener a bit. I really enjoy writing like that.
I also like having an overarching narrative without it feeling like a lofty concept record. Andy Shauf does this incredibly well. He’s got a record called ‘The Party’, where everything happens at the same party and each track jumps between characters, adding different perspectives. That got me thinking on a broader level.
The next batch of songs came from seeing a guy while I was walking home. He was dressed in his Sunday best but absolutely battered, stumbling, rolling around on the pavement, shouting, “Heavyweight champion of the universe, Jesus Christ himself.” There was so much to unpack there. You’ve got a man on the floor, in need of saving, praising a saviour who isn’t there to save him. That’s tragicomic in itself.
‘Drinking Martinis in the Olive Gardens of Gethsemane’ came from that moment, where I’m writing from within the character of a white man’s Jesus. From there, I started thinking, what’s the bigger story?
The songs on the next EP are connected. They’re characters who have relationships with one another. I’m often reluctant to talk too much about song meanings, I don’t want to give all the pieces away. When people connect the dots and come back to me, I’m like, oh, you get it.
Matt: This idea of recurring characters and the comedy-tragedy juxtaposition feels reminiscent of Greek myth or Shakespeare. Have those kinds of works influenced you?
Brodie: Yes. What I’ve always loved about Greek myths is how ironic they are. The gods are so human. They have all the power in the world and they’re still petty and vindictive. I’ve always liked that imbalance, the idea that you can have the power to do anything, and still act like an idiot.
Matt: Looking ahead to 2026, we’ve got three singles already and hints at two bodies of work coming next year. What can audiences expect, and why split it into two releases?
Brodie: What people can expect is a relentless onslaught of music.
There’s been a long time since my first EP, and there’s a lot of material ready to go. I’ve basically written an album’s worth of music and the scope of the story warranted that length. The pragmatic reality is that I can’t afford to make a full album. Welcome to modern-day music.
So the more logical option is a part one and part two and maybe one day they get released as a double EP. We’ll see.
Matt: Alongside the new music, will you be ramping up the live shows?
Brodie: Yes.
Matt: We’ll put an ellipsis there, shall we?
Brodie: Actually, I was going to explain more, but an ellipsis would be quite funny…
Check out Brodie Milner’s latest single ‘Convenience Store Gospel’ below:
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