Several years in the making, Matthew Dear’s new album Black City had its work cut out to follow up the marvellous and still-so-refreshing Asa Breed. His blend of quirky electronica with live percussion and his bizarre Talking Heads informed vocals combined to sound quite like anything else, and it remains a classic of recent times.
Honey catches you off guard from the word go, Dear at his most naked and stripped back – are we to have an album of introspection and slightness? No, thankfully, as the funky Texan returns in a big way on track number 2, the rather addictive and slinky rolling groove of I Can’t Feel. His vocal style is as curious and affable as ever, yet holds more gravitas and confidence than before. He sounds more assured and lower in tone
It was probably inevitable he’d end up embracing his inner disco lover, given the trends of the years since Asa Breed first delighted us, and the spacey, slow-burning feel of Little People (Black City) is a success on that theme. Hearing him in a floatier, dreamy sort of way just adds to his lovability more. The track sprawls into a lengthy jam, full of sonic booms and feeling like a journey into Dear’s sub conscious. That’s definitely something that characterises his music and lyrics – they feel totally uncontrived, like they have just fallen directly out of his head exactly how he hears and conceptualises them therein. That not might actually be the case if you were to ask him, but it’s certainly the way his music appears.
He’s not afraid to embrace more vivid emotions and melodies on this new album – the sumptuous, melancholy beauty of Slowdance attesting to this. He still manages to pepper such warmth with his trademark multi-tracked vocal kookiness, resulting in a strange but compelling mixture of textures. Shortwave sees him go all tripped-out incantations and a bit Indian, like The Beatles jamming with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Rishikesh in ’68. Has he been dabbling in a bit of acid too? Monkey would suggest so too, carrying on the great tradition of songs about people being like monkeys and that.
Gem completes the harmonious cycle of the album, taking us back to the gentle introduction with its heavenly ambient sounds and pristine pianos – like the slumberous descent into warm sleep after the mind-bending of a hallucinogen-fuelled night. Perhaps for some, the more tangible and recognisable sense of emotion displayed on this album won’t be to all Dear fans taste, but it’s hard to deny that Black City has seen him take some big leaps and bounds as a musician, vocalist and songwriter. He remains a unique talent to cherish – a delightfully square peg in the round hole of electronic music.
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