Even before that, he decided to name his Liverpool indie-rock band after an Australian marsupial.

So when Murphy flew into Sydney in January to record songs for his solo project Love Fame Tragedy amidst Australia's worst bushfire disaster, he was shattered.

"It was sad and strange times indeed and landing in all of that smoke," Murphy says. "I did think to myself, wow, maybe I shouldn't be here.

"But I was amazed to see the depth of Aussie spirit over the three weeks I was there, people really did a good job of coming together and remaining upbeat even though everything that was going on was horrifying. At least that was my interpretation of the time I spent there."

Murphy recorded the songs Pink Mist, Honeypie, The Sea Is Deep And The World Is Wide, Sharks, B-Team and sections of You Take The Fun Out Of Everything at One Flight Up Studios while in Sydney with his producer Mark Crew.

Crew's wife is from Newcastle, so both families chose to spend part of the southern hemisphere summer in Australia.

The songs appear on Love Fame Tragedy's 17-track debut album Wherever I Go, I Want To Leave. The rest of the album was recorded in Los Angeles and London.

The Wombats last released new material in 2018 with the album Beautiful People Ruin Your Life. Love Fame Tragedy is more electronic and synth-focused than The Wombats, but as Murphy explains, the songs are "cut from the same loaf of bread."

"I'm trying not to view it as a solo project, though I guess it is," he says. "For me, it's another band with a heavy focus on collaboration in the studio.

"The album was written by June last year with no obvious pandemic in sight. I don't think there was ever gonna be a perfect time for me to do this, so I just cracked on really."

Murphy called in his extensive list of contacts when it came to collaborating on the album. Contributions were made by Joey Santiago (The Pixies), Mark Stoermer (The Killers), Dan Smith (Bastille), Joji Malani (Gang of Youths), Gus Unger-Hamilton (alt-J), Australian indie-pop artist Jack River and others.

The collaboration process was fairly casual with Murphy and Crew inviting friends into the studio, getting them drunk and letting them "bleed all over the tracks" before keeping the best parts.

"We all have this unique river of melodies and ideas running through us," Murphy says. "That becomes our style, if you like, sometimes I think of it as everyone is a soda can with their own unique design on it.

"So tapping into it for your own benefit is pretty exciting to me. Having Gus from alt-J on a song made it sound 10 times times cooler in my head."

River duets with Murphy on the single Multiply and added her backing vocals elsewhere.

"I fell in love with her voice a good while back, and through mutual friends we made it work," Murphy says. "Her voice is so cool I think we ended up having her sing on five-plus tracks."

Love Fame Tragedy's album Wherever I Go, I Want To Leave is out on Friday.