Matt Ward & Garrett R. Cooper live at Hymn Bar

Matt Ward & Garrett R. Cooper Hymn Bar, Adelaide Thursday October 15 $10, too easy Matt Ward has spent years carving out his own place in Australian songwriting, drawing on country, Americana and the Australian landscape to make songs about love, distance, loss, belonging and the long roads in between. With three albums behind him, two ARIA #1 Australian Country albums and a growing catalogue of critically acclaimed work, Ward has built a reputation for songs that feel lived-in rather than manufactured. His 2019 album Heartland and 2021’s If I Was In Dallas Tonightboth topped the ARIA Australian Country Album Chart, while 2024’s The Long Way Home reached #2. Garrett R. Cooper has spent most of his musical life in the Adelaide scene, in bands of all temperaments. Along side playing in Brave Mistakes, his solo writing is approached from a stripped-back corner of the songwriting world, with voice and acoustic guitar at the centre of songs that move through memory, relationships, grief, grudges, places and the uneasy business of getting older. Drawing on the Australian songwriting tradition of The Church and The Triffids alongside artists such as Jason Isbell and Jason Molina, Cooper’s songs favour atmosphere, detail and a good line over anything too polished. Different writers, both grounded in the same thing: strong songs, played close to the bone.