File between Antony & The Johnsons and Rufus Wainwright. He mightn’t be able to play the guitar anymore, but divine singer-songwriter Scott Matthew is still taking on the world. He spoke to Garrett Bithell from New York.

The last time I spoke to Scott Matthew, he was high as a kite – and charming as hell – on Vicodin. He was recovering from a particularly traumatic surgical procedure to reattach the flexor tendon to the bone in one of his fingers. He was mugged on the streets of New York and attempted to fend off his attacker. He was successful, but his finger didn’t fare so well. Not great news for a guitar-playing singer-songwriter.

That was almost a year ago, but sadly his finger will never recover. “It’s sort of rendered a bit useless now,” Matthew tells AXN. “So I’m not playing guitar anymore. I’m still writing on the guitar, but it’s just not up to scratch to record or play live. I’ve done my grieving though – and the wonderful thing is that I can still keep going. I’ve got such a great network of people around me, so it hasn’t really stopped anything.”

And that’s a massive relief. Allow me a moment of sycophantic editorialising – I haven’t been this excited about a musician for a long time. After getting his long-time-coming break on cult indie film Shortbus, “the gift that just keeps on giving”, ex-Sydneysider Matthew has finally released his debut self-titled album in Australia. “The fact that it’s out in Australia – my mother country – feels wonderful,” he says. “My parents can breathe a sigh of relief now – ‘oh my god, Scott is actually doing something with his life’! It’s all legitimate now.”

Matthew’s tragic ballads almost seem to know a special shortcut straight to your soul, conveying feelings of loss and vulnerability we all recognise in our bedroom mirrors – stories of unrequited love and romantic failures. But here is man that find incredible beauty in pain.

 “It’s all autobiographical,” Matthew admits. “I suppose people listen and think that I live in this state of depression! Unfortunately, that’s just what I write about – it’s what creatively turns me on. And I do – I think forever I will – find a huge amount of romance in sadness, love, or loss of love.

“But I’m living on the planet, so obviously I’m having experiences with people – and I do tend to fall in love too quickly. I’ve got a well of fucking misery! And my immediate reaction is to want to write about it.”

Matthew’s debut has already wooed Europe, having been first released on Berlin-based indie label Glitter House, and he has recently played the support fiddle for indie darling Sia Furler in the UK. While he now resides in the Big Apple, he jumps at the chance to come home to Australia – which certainly wasn’t always the case. “I ran screaming from that place to tell you the truth,” he says. “And I really fled with a feeling of dread. I suppose, like a lot of people in my situation, my upbringing was a little bit traumatic in the sense that I felt victimised and whatever. So I left with a disdain for Australian culture.

“But having said that, all that’s gone – it’s left my psyche now. I come to Australia and I just adore it; I wish I could spend more time there.”

Scott Matthew’s debut self-titled album is out now through Longtime Listener, plus ‘Abandoned/Prescription’, a double A-sided single in a special Australia-only release featuring ‘Language’ from the Shortbus soundtrack. Matthew is rumoured to be touring Australia early next year – check out myspace.com/scottmatthewmusic or scottmatthewmusic.com