Album of the Week: Matthew Dear, ‘Black City’

Album of the Week: Matthew Dear, ‘Black City’

6 August, 2010 | 9.17AM

• Written by: Beatportal
• Filed under: Music News: album of the week, ghostly international, matthew dear, spectral sound

Does having multiple aliases tear at the psyche? It might well: for evidence, we only need to look at Matthew Dear‘s new album, ‘Black City’. Not only is it a darker, stranger record than its predecessor, ‘Asa Breed’; it is, in its own quiet way, more unhinged than Dear’s work under any of his other aliases—Audion, False, or Jabberjaw.

It’s taken a while for Matthew Dear’s eponymous project to evolve into what it is today. His debut album, 2004’s ‘Leave Luck to Heaven’, was a mixture of vocal tracks (like the classic ‘Dog Days’) and instrumental cuts, but it didn’t sound radically different from earlier material from his other aliases; what distinguished the projects were differences in mood and intensity. It took 2007’s ‘Asa Breed’ for Dear to find his voice, both figuratively and literally, using his birth-name project as the vehicle for a newfound interest in eerie, ominous electronic pop.

When Dear began touring ‘Asa Breed’ with a live band, Matthew Dear’s Big Hands, and moved to the front and center of the stage, microphone in hand, it looked like maybe he was making a play for proper pop stardom. But for anyone who may have been ambivalent about that possibility, take heart: ‘Black City’ is hardly pop music.

It’s full of songs, yes—Dear sings on every track, multitracked and spanning the octaves, as per ‘Asa Breed’, getting the most out of his baritone bellow and his falsetto croon—but they don’t follow the usual rules. Fashioned from bassy rumble and abstracted sounds of uncertain provenance, it’s a hard record to wrap your head around: it often seems to be coming apart at the seams, unraveling even as it gathers force and energy. ‘Black City’ is a darkly psychedelic, deeply unsettling place to inhabit. But the more time you spend there, the less you want to leave.

Get 25% off ‘Black City’—and the rest of the entire Ghostly International catalog. Just click here to get your coupon code. (Offer good through August 10, 2010.)

Read on for a track-by-track breakdown of the album.

‘Honey’

The opening chord suggests a chopped and screwed ‘Walk on the Wild Side’; the pace feels less like honey than molasses. The density and darkness of it make me wonder if he was listening to mid-period Swans when he recorded this. It’s a hell of a way to open the album—like kicking off a sunset cruise with a solar eclipse.

‘I Can’t Feel’

There’s a shimmy and twang to ‘I Can’t Feel’ that almost reminds me of Brazilian music; but if there’s a Tropicalia influence here, it’s been charred to a crisp and smeared like charcoal. The chunky rhythms are essential Matthew Dear, a slow-motion chikka-chikka funk that goes all the way back to ‘Dog Days’. Check out the weird, atonal feel—’Black City’ is easily the wooziest thing he’s done yet.

‘Little People (Black City)’

I can’t hear ‘Little People (Black City)’ and not think of David Bowie. The synthesizers and vocal melody mark the record’s first great pop moment—and then draw it out for a decidedly anti-pop nine minutes.

‘Slowdance’

Everyone’s getting into the slow-motion house thing these days; Dear ups the ante with a 90-BPM creepy-crawl that pays tribute to ‘Movement’-era New Order.

‘Soil to Seed’

‘Soil to Seed’ is another of the album’s pop standouts—but this time, he gets in and out in under two and a half minutes. I’m not sure which is more hypnotic—the bass/guitar counterpoints, or the gleaming sounds in the background, which seem to disappear every time you fix your attention upon them.

‘You Put a Smell on Me’

Easily one of the album’s stranger tracks, ‘You Put a Smell on Me’ starts with minimalist, slo-mo techno and gradually piles on layer after layer—buzz-saw synths, blippy arpeggios, multitracked vocals—to climax with the mantra-like repetition, “Little red nightgown, little red nightgown.” One thing’s for sure: Dear is never weirder than when he’s singing about sex.

‘Shortwave’

‘Shortwave’ might be a nursery-school rhyme from an alternate universe where kiddies sprinkle ketamine on their cereal. “Unsettling” doesn’t begin to describe it.

‘Monkey’

At first, ‘Monkey’ seems almost impenetrable, with its glowering bass throb and its percussive squalls. Like so much of the album, it feels like a black hole, sucking all light deep inside. But as it gathers steam, bright chords and kazoo-like frequencies come streaming from the depths, finishing in an explosion of brilliant color.

‘More Surgery’

Another half-speed acid-disco hybrid, ‘More Surgery’ is among the tracks here that make me wonder if the anonymous Spectral signing Childproof Man isn’t really Dear in disguise. Whatever the case, it’s tracks like this that make me suspect he’s really onto something with this album: from the burbling rhythms, more felt than heard, to the fog of multitracked vocals and lysergic synths, this doesn’t sound like anyone else.

‘Gem’

Someone’s been listening to Brian Eno! That’s not a bad thing, though. A lovely ambient pop tune absolutely deserving of its title.

• (1) Comments
• (2234) Views
• Get 'Black City' on Beatport