When he returned to the east coast after a spell on BC’s Sunshine Coast, Halifax-based singer-songwriter Mat Hughes started writing and performing homespun songs on his keyboard in an attic-turned studio and makeshift music venue. Almost three years and three EPs later, he’s since upgraded from DIY house shows to playing sets across the province, including the EP release show for his latest offspring, South-facing Dumpster, at The Stage at St. Andrew’s in Halifax this past May.

Mat’s intricate yet unpretentious songwriting tunes classical technique to a modern pitch with percussive, piano-driven melodies that can turn any crowd into an audience of attentive listeners. His sharp, candid lyricism ranges from the playfully slapstick to the knife edge of existential pathos in topics like eco-anxiety, self-estrangement, and feeling homesick for a place you’ve never been, or merely passed through.

Mat may well have you laughing and crying within the same set with an inimitable, genre-defying voice that resonates both sonically and lyrically. He doesn’t tell you the moon is shining, but instead gathers all the mundane shards of a life, holding them up to the light to show you what cuts, and what glints. This ability to overlay dualities to their vanishing point is perhaps the greatest feat of The Motions, an album that gives voice to the perpetual ebb and flow of life’s tides—the motion sickness of going through the motions while standing perfectly still.